different between tempest vs cyclone

English

Etymology

From Old French tempeste (French tempête), from Latin tempestas (“storm”), from tempus (“time, weather”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?t?mp?st/
• Hyphenation: tem?pest

Noun

tempest (plural tempests)

1. A storm, especially one with severe winds.
   • 1847, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, ch. 16:

     As every sailor knows, a spicy gale in the tropic latitudes of the Pacific is far different from a tempest in the howling North Atlantic.
2. Any violent tumult or commotion.
   • 1914, Ambrose Bierce, "One Officer, One Man":

     They awaited the word "forward"—awaited, too, with beating hearts and set teeth the gusts of lead and iron that were to smite them at their first movement in obedience to that word. The word was not given; the tempest did not break out.

3. (obsolete) A fashionable social gathering; a drum.

Derived terms

• tempest in a teapot
• tempestuous

Translations

Verb

tempest (third-person singular simple present tempests, present participle tempesting, simple past and past participle tempested)

1. (intransitive, rare) To storm.
2. (transitive, chiefly poetic) To disturb, as by a tempest.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VII:

     . . . the seal

     And bended dolphins play; part huge of bulk,

     Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

     Tempest the ocean.

   • 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Drowned Lover," in Poems from St. Irvyne:

     Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,

     And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air.

Translations

References

• Webster, Noah (1828) , “tempest”, in An American Dictionary of the English Language
• tempest in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “tempest” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

Middle English

Etymology

Old French tempeste

Noun

tempest (plural tempests)

1. tempest (storm)

English

Etymology

Coined by Henry Piddington, probably in the 1840s, and based on some term in Ancient Greek. Sources disagree on the date and on which Ancient Greek term, though it had to be something derived from either ?????? (kúklos, “circle, wheel”) or ?????? (kukló?, “go around in a circle, form a circle, encircle”), for example the present active participle ?????? (kuklôn). See cycle and wheel.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?sa?.klo?n/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?sa?.kl??n/

Noun

cyclone (plural cyclones)

1. (broad sense) A weather phenomenon consisting of a system of winds rotating around a center of low atmospheric pressure
2. (narrow sense) Such weather phenomenon occurring in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean
3. A low pressure system.
4. (informal) The more or less violent, small-scale circulations such as tornadoes, waterspouts, and dust devils.
5. A strong wind.
6. A cyclone separator; the cylindrical vortex tube within such a separator

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:cyclone.

Derived terms

• anticyclone
• cyclone cellar
• cyclone pit

Translations

Verb

cyclone (third-person singular simple present cyclones, present participle cycloning, simple past and past participle cycloned)

1. This term needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.
   • 1997, D. J. H. Jones, Murder in the New Age

     White dust was cycloning at the bottom of ravines that cut for miles into the red flatness

   • 2015, Robert J. Morgan, Mastering Life Before It's Too Late

     Now, all of a sudden, I had to juggle class schedules with study time and assignment deadlines and work hours. It quickly cycloned into a sort of frantic agitation with all-nighters, near misses, and frenzied nerves.

See also

• hurricane
• typhoon
• polar vortex
• cyclone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ?????? (kuklôn), present active participle of ?????? (kukló?, “I encircle”), from ?????? (kúklos, “circle”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /si.klon/

Noun

cyclone m (plural cyclones)

1. cyclone (rotating system of winds)

Further reading

• “cyclone” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).