a tropical storm, with wind speeds over 34 knots (17 m/s) · a storm, a cyclone, a hurricane, willy willy
eş: 野分, 颶風
köken: First attested in Japanese in 1900 in the katakana form タイフーン (taifūn), itself a borrowing from English typhoon. Prior to the Meiji era (1868–1912), this kind of severe storm was called a 野分き (nowaki), literally a "field-splitter" for the way the winds would wreak havoc on farms. The term タイフーン (taifūn) then appears in 1900, also attested with spelling 大風 and reading of taifun. Then in 1907…
Probably ultimately of Sinitic origin, Mandarin 大风 (dàfēng, “big wind”), Cantonese 大風 /大风 (daai⁶ fung¹, “big wind”), via Arabic طُوفَان (ṭūfān), Hindi तूफ़ान (tūfān), and Persian توفان (tufân). Ancient Greek Τυφῶν (Tuphôn, “Typhon, father of the winds”) is unrelated but has secondarily contaminated the word: given the location of typhoons as a Pacific Ocean phenomenon, it is more likely it began…