It's hurricane season, and, since these storms brew up in the Caribbean, the word comes, not
surprisingly, from a Caribbean language. In the now extinct Taino,
spoken in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles, hurakán
meant “god of the storm”. When Europeans started exploring the
Caribbean and having their first taste of violent tropical storms,
they adapted this native word, the Spanish as huracán
and the Portuguese as furacão.
Until the spelling finally settled down as “hurricane” in English
in the 1680s, there were about thirty different spellings, the most
common being “furacane”. In the 1700s, a “hurricane” was also
a kind of fashionable social gathering where your house was overrun
with people.
For the etymology of hurricane's Pacific cousin, typhoon, please click here.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteUntil I read this posting, I thought I knew something about Spanish ... Well, not anymore.
I thought I knew Spanish had replaced (some) initial "f"s with "h"s. Such as in "hermosa"/"formosa"/frumoasa"(Romanian)/"beautiful".
Now I learn that Spanish imported a word starting with "h", while Portuguese replaced that "h" with an "f".
At this point, I have no idea how/why this happened.
Thank you.