[BITList] Cyclones and the Sundarbans

[John Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:


As you might have heard, many parts of the state of Bihar in
north India were recently inundated by the berserk waters of
the river Kosi. Apart from floods, we are also occasionally
tormented by cyclones.

I was intrigued to read the following: from the BBC -
''The word cyclone was coined in the Sundarbans by the British
in the 19th Century, when their attempt to build a port there was
wrecked by a storm.''
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4095701.stm

This led me to this etymological find -

*** The word cyclone was introduced by Henry Piddington in his
The Sailor's Horn-Book for the Law of Storms of 1848.  As he
said, "I suggest that we might, for all this last class of circular
or highly curved winds, adopt the term 'Cyclone' from the Greek
kyklos (which signifies amongst other things the coil of a snake)
as expressing sufficiently the tendency to circular motion in
these meteors."  By 1856 the word was being used to refer
to tornadoes, and by 1875 it was an accepted meteorological
term for a low pressure system, from the central low pressure
to the winds (and clouds) rotating counterclockwise (in the
Northern hemisphere) around it.  A high pressure system then
came to be known as an anticyclone (1877). Other languages
have since borrowed these terms from English.

The OED comments upon Piddington's derivation, suggesting
that the true Greek source word was kykloma "the coil of a
serpent", which might explain the early variant cyclome.
Kyklos actually means "wheel" or "circle" in Greek.***
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW170/page2.html

And then I found out that Henry Piddington's book is online
(full view) at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=UIMDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Henry+Piddington

There is a great description of the Sundarbans in either Miss
Fane in India, or one of the books by the Godden sisters
(probably Under the Tropical Sun). I'll have to dig them up from
my shelves. I know most of you have read these excellent
books.


ooroo

If you don't hear the knock of opportunity - build a door.

Anon.