cyclone

Hurricane Florence, 2018; photo from a camera on board the International Space Station

8 August 2025

Cyclone, a noun meaning a windstorm that revolves around a center of low pressure, has a somewhat interesting etymology in that it is a modern coinage using ancient roots. It is also one of those rare words that we can pinpoint its precise origin, a situation somewhat more common with scientific and technical terms.

Cyclone was coined in 1848 by Henry Piddington (1797–1858, an English ship captain turned scientist who had settled in India. Piddington is best known for his study of meteorology. In his Sailor’s Horn-book of that year, Piddington wrote:

CLASS II. Circular (or highly curved) winds.

Hurricane Storms. Some gales of high latitudes (?)
Whirlwinds—of wind, rain, dust, &c.—called in Spanish, French, Portuguese, &c. Turbo, Turbonado, Tourbillion, Tourmente.
African Tornado, (sometimes?)
Water spouts.
Bursting of Spouts water spouts, &c.
Samiel.
Simoom.

I am not altogether averse to new names, but I well know how sailors, and indeed many landsmen; dislike them; I suggest, however, that we might perhaps for all this last class, of circular or highly curved winds, adopt the term “Cyclone” from the Greek Κυκλως (which signifies amongst other things the coil of a snake) as neither affirming the circle to be a true one, though the circuit may be complete, yet expressing sufficiently the tendency to circular motion in these meteors. We should by the use of it be able to speak without confounding names which may express either straight or circular winds—such as “gale, storm, hurricane,” &c.—with those which are more frequently used (as hurricane) to designate merely their strength. This is what leads to confusion, for we say of, and we the authors ourselves write about, ships and places in the same “storm” having “the storm” commencing—"the gale increasing”—"the hurricane passing over”—and the like; merely because the ships or localities of which we speak had the wind of different degrees of strength, though the whole were experiencing parts of the same circular storm. Cycloidal is a known word, but it expresses relation to a defined geometrical curve and one not approaching our usual views, which are those of something nearly, though not perfectly, circular. Now if we used a single word and said The “Cyclone” commenced, increased, passed over, &c. we shall get rid of all this ambiguity, and use the same word to express the same thing in all cases.

Piddington makes an error with his Greek. Κυκλως (kuklos) means circle, not the “coil of a snake.” It the snake metaphor is what he had in mind, the Greek would be κύκλωμα (kukloma). Some nineteenth-century writers with better knowledge of Greek spelled the word cyclome.

While the term is used in a general sense for all circular storms, regardless of wind strength or size, it can also be used more specifically to refer to smaller circular storms, such as tornados. And, in fact, in the United States cyclone has often been used to mean tornado.

Of course, for New Yorkers cyclone has a very different association. It is the name of the famous Coney Island roller coaster that opened in 1927.

The “Cyclone” roller coaster, Coney Island, Brooklyn

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Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1893, s.v. cyclone, n.

Piddington, Henry. The Sailor’s Horn-Book for the Law of Storms. New York: John Wiley, 1848, 8. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credits:

Hurricane Florence: NASA, 2018. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Cyclone Roller Coaster: Leonard J. DeFrancisci, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

satellite

The Hubble Space Telescope

6 August 2025

We normally think of a satellite as an object in outer space that is in orbit around another, larger object, such as a moon around a planet. But that is not its only meaning in present-day English, nor is it the original sense of the word.

Satellite is borrowed from both the French satellite, meaning bodyguard and directly from the French word’s source, the Latin satelles, meaning attendant or member of a retinue. This courtly sense of the word appears in English by 1522, when it appears in a translation of Sallust’s account of the Jugurthine War (112–06 BCE) between Rome and Numidia. Jugurtha, the adopted son of King Micipsa of Numidia, had, upon Micipsa’s death, usurped the throne in 117 BCE by having his two adopted brothers killed.

This done the sayd Numydyan conuayed these armed men preuyly by nyght into the house of Hiempsall / lyke as he was infourmed by Iugurth. Whan this treatoure satellyte was entred with his company & had broken into th[e] inwarde edifices: diuers of them serched for the prince Hiempsall: som murdred his seruau[n]tes as they lay slepynge in theyr beddys suspectynge no suche treason.

Jugurtha was captured by the Romans in 104 BCE, paraded in Rome as part of a triumph, and later executed.

The celestial sense of satellite is a metaphorical extension of the original sense of a courtly attendant. Johannes Kepler, writing in Latin in his 1611 Dioptrice describes the moons of Jupiter as satelles. He is ventriloquizing Galileo, not claiming the discovery of Jupiter’s moons as his own:

Atq[ue] en inventum Iovi satellitium seniculo vero decrepito duos servos, qui incessum illius adjutent, nunquam a lateribus illius discedentes.

(And behold, I have discovered two servants, a satellite of Jupiter, an old and decrepit man, who help his progress, never departing from his sides.)

Kepler’s satellitium is in the singular, indicating that he is using the word to refer to a retinue, not a single servant. As far as I know, Galileo did not himself use satelles to describe the moons.

This sense appears in English discourse in 1640 in John Sadler’s Masquarade du Ciel, a pageant performed for the court of Charles I about the new discoveries in astronomy. The metaphor of a moon being a courtly attendant is obvious:

Now JUPITER also commeth back again with his Satellites, waiting on the Returne of His Soveraigne PHEBUS; who, in his Return, exalteth JUPITER, His Loyall and most Humble Servant: who, like a Noble Subject, Thought one Gracious smile, one Glaunce, from his Prince; more then enough to reward the most faithfull and Loyall Service (possible) to His Royall Soveraign.

The use of satellite to describe an artificial device put into orbit around a planet predates the capability to actually do so by some eighty years. As with many technological terms, the use in science fiction precedes the use in science fact. And for this one we go to the grandfather of that genre, Jules Verne. In his 1879 novel Les 500 millions de la Bégum, Verne uses satellite to refer to projectile shot into orbit from a cannon. The English translation, The Begum’s Fortune, appeared the same year:

You will hear with pleasure that we saw your perfect shell, at forty-five minutes and four seconds past eleven, pass above our town. It was flying towards the west, circulating in space, which it will continue to do until the end of time. projectile, animated with an initial speed twenty times superior to the actual speed, being ten thousand yards to the second, can never fall! This movement, combined with terrestrial attraction, destines it to revolve perpetually round our globe.

You ought to have been aware of this

I hope and expect that the cannon in the Bull Tower is quite spoilt by this first trial; but two hundred thousand dollars is not too much to have paid for the pleasure of having endowed the planetary world with a new star, and the earth with a second satellite.

But satellite also has a political sense, that of a country or state that is dominated and controlled by a larger one. This sense appears in the late eighteenth century. Thomas Paine uses the word in his 1776 revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense:

Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems. England to Europe: America to itself.

Paine is creating the metaphor of a client state being a moon of a larger world, but he is not actually using the word itself in this metaphorical sense. Common Sense was so widely read and such a seminal political tract, that it must have had an influence on this use of the word. But for the actual use of satellite in this sense we must look to a few years later. It appears in an anonymous, 1780 letter from American loyalists who implore the Westminster government not to make peace with the rebellious American colonies or England will lose more than just the thirteen colonies:

With so many ready, and natural opportunities for enlarging their territories, it is not reasonable to suppose, that your [e.g., England's] possessions, which they [e.g., the rebellious thirteen colonies] usually call the Appendages, or Satellites of America [e.g., Canada, Newfoundland, and the West Indies], will be free from attack, and it will be absurd to expect that the force which would be insufficient to subdue them, or retain the ground you have in their present shattered and disunited condition, would be able to protect your remaining dominion in those parts, when they shall have gained a firmer establishment, encrease [sic] of power, ampler resources, and closer union.

While satellite has acquired new meanings over the centuries, all of them rely on the metaphor of a servant-master or courtier-noble relationship and thus, at their core, retain a vestige of the original Latin meaning of the word.

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Sources:

“Address from the Loyalists in America to the People of England.” Morning Post (London), 29 December 1780, 4/2. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Kepler, Johannes. Dioptrice. Augsburg: Davidu Franci, 1611, 17. Archive.org.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879, s.v. satelles, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, December 2018, s.v. satellite, n.

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. London: J. Almon, 1776, 22. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Sadler, John. Masquarade du Ciel. London: Richard Badger for Samuel Cartwright, 1640, sig. C1v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Sallust. Here Begynneth the Famous Cronycle of the Warre, which the Romayns Had against Iugurth Vsurper of the Kyngdome of Numidy. Alexander Barclay, trans. London: Rycharde Pynson, 1522, fol. 11v. ProQuest Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Verne, Jules. The Begum’s Fortune. W. H. G. Kingston, trans. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1879, 179–80. HathiTrust Digital Library.

———. Les tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine; Les 500 millions de la Bégum; Les révoltés de la “Bounty.” Paris: J. Hetzel, 1879, 123. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: NASA, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

gnome

A garden gnome

4 August 2025

Just because two words are spelled the same does not mean they share an etymology. Often they do, but it is an unreliable guide, for sometimes the different meanings have wildly different origins. Such is the case with gnome. Most of us are familiar with gnome meaning a diminutive creature or spirit, associated with the earth and often guarding treasure. But a gnome can also be a saying or maxim, a pearl of wisdom. These two meanings are etymologically unrelated.

This latter sense is older. It comes from the Greek γνώμη (gnome), meaning thought, judgment, opinion. The plural γνῶμαι (gnomai) means sayings or maxims. It starts appearing in English in the mid sixteenth century. Here is an early example from Richard Rainolde’s 1563 Foundacioun of Rhetorike

A sentence is an Oracion, in fewe woordes, shewyng a godlie precept of life, exhorting or diswadyng: the Grekes dooe call godly preceptes, by the name of Gnome, or Gnomon, whiche is asmoche to saie, a rule or square, to direct any thyng by, for by them, the life of manne is framed to all singularitie.

The term for the diminutive creature is first found in the writings of Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim, c. 1493–1541). Paracelsus wrote in Latin, and where he got the term is unknown. He may have just invented it, or perhaps it is an error for the Greek *γεωνόμος (*geonomus), an unattested word that would mean earth-dweller. This sense of gnome first appears in English in 1657 in a translation of one of Paracelsus’s works by Henry Pinnell:

Magicall tempests rise out of the aire, and there end: not as if the Element of aire begot them, but rather the spirit of the aire. The fire conceives some things bodily, as the Earth doth the Gnomes.

A glossary at the end of Pinnell’s translation has this:

Gnomes, Gnomi, are little men, dwarfs, or rather spirits with bodies living under the earth, Pigmies scarce halfe a foot high.

So remember to take care when assuming that words that are spelled and pronounced the same have the same etymology.

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Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1900: s.v. gnome, n.1, gnome, n.2, gnomic, adj.1 & n., gnomish, adj., gnosis, n.; 1993: gnomic, adj.2 & n.,

Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim). The First Book of Philosophy Written to the Athenians. H. Pinnell, trans. In Oswald Croll. Philosophy Reformed & Improved in Four Profound Tractates. H. Pinnell, trans. London: M.S. for Lodwick Lloyd, 1657, 19–20, 66. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Rainolde, Richard. A Booke Called Foundacioun of Rhetorike. London: John Kingston, 1563, fol. 20r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: EddyDD, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work.

cloture

US Senate in session during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Clinton

1 August 2025

Cloture is the act of ending debate on a subject in a legislative assembly, and most often today it’s used in reference to the United States Senate. The word is a modern borrowing from the French clôture, which was used by the French Assembly in the nineteenth century.

We see the word being used in English to refer to the French practice as early as 1835. From London’s Morning Chronicle of 19 March of that year:

But the evident cause of stopping the debate so abruptly was the appearance of General Bugeaud at the tribune. This mad partisan, this Colonel Srathorp of the Chamber of Deputies, would infallibly have terminated a rigmarole of absurd provocation by some absurd motion in favour of Ministers, which, in consequence, most probably would have been negatived. Ministers, therefore, unable to silence General Bugeaud, were obliged to stop his mouth with the cry of “cloture;” and the Opposition, which felt that it had the best of the debate, did not show itself inclined to oppose the demand. Thus ended the interpellations.

And in the late 1840s, discussions about instituting a cloture rule, modeled on the French rule, in the House of Commons in Westminster began. As a result, when exactly the word crossed over from being used in a French context to an English one is difficult to pin down with precision. But here is an instance that is about debate in the House of Commons with no reference to the French practice in London’s The Standard of 16 May 1850, although the word is placed in italics, indicating it has not been entirely anglicized:

Everybody laments the prodigious waste of public time in the House of Commons, which results from ambitious oratory. Mr. Chisholm Anstey, Mr. Roebuck, and Mr. Urquhart are bye [sic] words among us for consuming more public time to little purpose than any three men in England. We have even had a parliamentary committee appointed to inquire into the propriety of curtailing the length of senatorial tongues, and putting the extinguisher of the cloture upon the fervid rhetoric of gentlemen like Sir Joshua Walmesley.

The inquiry into a cloture rule in Westminster continued for decades. The rule was not formally adopted until 1882. But in the mean time an informal cloture process was sometimes seen, where a member would voluntarily cease speaking when asked. Here is an example of such an informal cloture rule from the Illustrated London News of 26 February 1870:

And at last Mr. Ayrton rose to put his imprimatur on that view of the subject. While arguing generally, though the hour was a critical one, he adequately listened to; but when he seemed to be entering on an exposition of his ideas of the duty of a Chief Commissioner of Works, and was apparently about to repeat at length his disclaiming speech on his re-election for the Tower Hamlets, it is not too much to say that the small House which was existent at the moment rose with curious unanimity, ad so demanded the “cloture” that the right hon. Gentleman abruptly ceased.

And here is commentary on the cloture rule from the 1887 edition of Lester S. Cushing’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice:

In the House of Commons, England, ever since the Irish Parliamentary Party proved strong enough to combat with the Opposition by obstructing all bills in the endeavor to procure “Home Rule” for Ireland there has been nothing but turmoil over every bill proposed; to stop this the “Government Party” passed a rule which was applied wherever obstruction or debate was carried too far; this was called “Cloture.” It is used as a “gag” law, as when “Cloture” is moved every thing or motion is subordinated to the motion in favor of which “Cloture” was applied.

In the United States, the House of Representatives had always had an equivalent to the cloture rule, that is the motion to call the previous question. But in the Senate, there was no formal mechanism for ending debate. As long as a member or members held the floor, they could filibuster and forestall a vote. It wasn’t until 1917 that the Senate adopted a cloture rule requiring a two-thirds majority approval for ending debate. The number of votes was subsequently reduced to a three-fifths majority for most matters and a simple majority for certain questions, like consent for judicial nominations.

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Sources:

“About Filibusters and Cloture: Historical Overview,” United States Senate, accessed 6 July 2025.

Cushing, Lester S. Manual of Parliamentary Practice: Rules of Proceeding and Debate in Deliberative Assemblies. Frances P. Sullivan, ed. New York: M. J. Ivers, 1887, §222n, 118n. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“London: Thursday, March 19, 1835.” Morning Chronicle (London), 19 March 1835, 3/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online (1891), 1989, s.v. cloture, n.

“Sketches in Parliament.” Illustrated London News. 26 February 1870, 222/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003.

“Thursday Evening, May 16.” The Standard (London), 16 May 1850, 2/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credit: C-SPAN, 1999. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

armadillo

A nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus)

30 July 2025

The armadillo is a largely nocturnal American mammal of the order Cingulata. There are a number of species of armadillo, of which the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) is perhaps the most familiar to English speakers. That species is found in South and Central America and in the southeastern United States, as far west as Texas and as far north as Nebraska and is the only species of armadillo common to the United States.

Armadillo has a straightforward etymology. Its name comes from its keratinous skin that forms a leathery, armored carapace about its head, upper body, and tail.  The word is a borrowing from Spanish, armado (“armored,” past participle of armar) + -illo (diminutive suffix). So an armadillo is literally a “little armored one.”

The word appears in Spanish in Nicolas Monardes 1571 De las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al vso de medicina (Of the Things that Are Brought from Our West Indies, which Serve as Medicine). That work was translated into English in 1577 later by John Frampton, which is the first known use of the word in English:

Thei dooe bryng also from the firme lande a bone, the whiche is of the taile of a straunge beaste, whiche is all couered ouer with small shelles, euen unto the feete, like as Horse is couered with armour: where by he is called the Armadillo, that is to saie a beaste armed. He is of the greatnesse of a yonge Pigge, and in the snoute he is like unto hym, he hath a greate and long taile like to a Lizarde. He abideth or dwelleth in the yearth, as a Mole doeth, and thei saie that he is maintained thereof, for abroade out of the yearth, thei see hym not eate any thyng.

Another early English use, with a slightly different spelling and clearly cribbed from Frampton’s translation, can be found in Thomas Blundeville’s 1594 His Exercises Containing Sixe Treatises:

The beast Armadillio is found in the Realme of Mexico, and he is no bigger than a cat, hee is headed like a Swine, and hath the féet of a Herison, and a long tayle, he is armed with scales, whereof he taketh his name, he keepeth for the most part within the ground, and as some suppose, doth liue by the earth, by reason that he is neuer seene to eat abroad out of his den, the bones of his tayle are medicinable, and do remedie the paine and deaffnes of the eares.

When I lived in Texas, I would occasionally encounter armadillos in the summer when walking my dog in the pre-dawn hours (to avoid the heat). It is indeed an odd-looking creature, stranger in real life than it appears in photos.

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Sources:

Blundeville, Thomas. His Exercises Containing Sixe Treatises. London: John Windet, 1594, 261v. ProQuest Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Monardes, Nicolás. Segunda parte del libro de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al vso de medicina. Seville: Alonso Escribano, 1571, 96. HathiTrust Digital Library.

———. The Three Bookes Written in the Spanish Tonge by the Famous Phisition D. Monardes. John Frampton, trans. London: William Norton, 1577, sig. fol. 73v. ProQuest Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, March 2016, s. v. armadillo, n.

Photo Credit: Gail Hampshire, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.