Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Typhoon |
TyphoonNoun1. A tropical cyclone occurring in the W Pacific or Indian oceans. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "typhoon" was first used: 1555. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Geography | Name given to tropical cyclones of the China Sea and, more generally, of the North-West Pacific ; A cyclonic storm of the China Seas and the coasts of Japan which occur at the seasons of the changes of the monsoons. ; A Chinese term, now universally adopted, for tropical cyclone in the Western Pacific; Same as hurricane in the Atlantic and cyclone in the South-East Asia; -DDMG. Source: European Union. (references) |
Science | Hurricanes in the Western Pacific Ocean. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Even before the new Hurricane was rolling off the production lines in March 1937, Sydney Camm had moved on to designing its future replacement as a private project. This was to be a massive plane designed around the equally massive Napier Sabre engine. The work proved useful when Hawker received specification F.18/37 in January 1938 from the Air Ministry, which asked for a fighter based around either the Napier Sabre or the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine. The engines were similar in that they were both 24 cylinder designs that were designed to deliver over 2,000hp, and different primarily in the arrangement of the cylinders - an H-block in the Sabre and an X-block in the Vulture.
The two resulting models became known as the 'R' and 'N' (based on the engine manufacturer) and were very similar – the Vulture powered R plane had a rounder nose profile and a ventral radiator, whereas the Sabre powered N had a flatter deck and a chin mounted radiator. The basic design of both continued the Hawker tradition of using 'older' construction techniques; the front fuselage was welded steel just like the Hurricane, and the design used a massive 40 foot wing that was much thicker than what you would find on designs like the Spitfire. Camm did give in to the times for much of the rest of the plane though, it was semi-monocoque from the cockpit rearward, flush riveted, and had wide set gear.
The R version first flew in October 1939, and the RAF was so impressed they ordered 1,000 as the Tornado. Various problems, notably compression effects which were previously unknown to Hawker, slowed the acceptance down. In addition the plane had rather disappointing climb performance, which meant it wouldn't be the Spitfire-replacing interceptor they were looking for. In February 1940 the first N model, now known as the Typhoon, was delivered. The RAF placed a large order for it as well, but moved production to Gloster Aircraft who otherwise had no designs to produce. Like the Tornado, the Typhoon was soon demonstrating its own problems, including vibrations from the engine causing the wing skinning to peel.
Eventually the RAF cancelled all work on both models in May 1940 so that Hawker could concentrate solely on the Hurricane during the Battle of Britain. This was the design's first brush with death. Some small scale work continued, changes to streamline the fuselage and supply a much thinner wing were looked at, as well as alternate engines in the form of large radials. In October pressure on the RAF eased and work was allowed to continue on the two original designs.
The first full production version Tornado was delivered in early 1941 and demonstrated the then unheard of speed of 425mph fully armed. This was also be the last Tornado. While production lines were being drawn up, the Vulture project was suddenly terminated by Rolls-Royce and the Tornado was left without an engine.
Luckilly, the Typhoon had 'good enough' performance to warrant production. The first production Mk.IA was delivered in May 1941 with twelve Browning .303 guns, but this was followed quickly with the Mk.IB with four Hispano 20mm cannons.
By this time the Spitfire V's were meeting Focke-Wulf Fw 190's in combat and getting rather beat up, so the Typhoon was rushed into squadron service to counter the new German plane. Sadly this proved to be a disaster. A structural weakness in the tail meant that it tended to break off when pulling out of dives, the Fw's favourite escape. Once again there was talk of killing the design.
It wasn't until 1943 that the various problems with the airframe and engine had finally started to be worked out of the system. But by this time the need for a pure fighter was no longer important and the design found itself being converted into a fighter-bomber – much like the Hurricane had before it. The powerful engine allowed the plane to carry a massive load of up to two 1,000lb bombs, although it would become much more famous with four 60lb rockets under each wing.
The Mk.IB, now widely known as the Tiffy, distinguished itself particularly in the Battle of Normandy. In one famous case Tiffys of the 2nd TAF decimated a large concentration of armor ahead of Avranches, disposing of no fewer than 137 tanks, and opening the way for the liberation of France and Belgium. For use in the tactical reconnaissance role, the Typhoon FR.IB was developed early in 1945. In this version the two inboard cannon were removed and three F.24 cameras were carried in their place. One Typhoon was also converted as a prototype night fighter, with A.I. equipment, special night-flying cockpit and other modifications. Production of the Typhoon, entirely by Gloster, was 3,330 machines.
Span 12.7 m; length 9.75 m; height 4.70 m; wing area 25.92 m². Maximum speed 665 km/hr.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hawker Typhoon."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
River | Rain, rainfall; serein; shower, scud; downpour; driving rain, drenching rain, cloudburst; hyetology, hyetography; predominance of Aquarius, reign of St. Swithin; mizzle, drizzle, stillicidum, plash; dropping. Verb: falling weather; northeaster, hurricane, typhoon. |
Wind | Gust, blast, squall, gale, half a gale, storm, tempest, hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, samiel, cyclone, anticyclone, typhoon; simoon, simoom; harmattan, monsoon, trade wind, sirocco, mistral, bise, tramontane, levanter; capful of wind; fresh breeze, stiff breeze; keen blast; blizzard, barber, candelia, chinook, foehn, khamsin, norther, vendaval, wuther. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Typhoon |
| English words defined with "typhoon": Tuffoon, Tyfoon. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "typhoon": tropical storm. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "typhoon": Typhon. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Flight, we are looking at a typhoon warning on the edge of the prime recovery zone. (Apollo 13; writing credit: Jim Lovell; Jeffrey Kluger) | |
Clever | Typhoon Rips through Cemetery, Hundreds Dead (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Typhoon Signal No. 10 (1959) The Yellow Typhoon (1920) Typhoon (2003) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books | |||
Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Typhoon Saomai Gets Nasty. Credit: NASA. |  | Typhoon Prapiroon. Credit: NASA. |
 | The sultan's palace at Maimbung, Jolo After the typhoon. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection. |  | Sea surface as observed from 1500 feet in Typhoon Kerry. Credit: Flying With NOAA. |
 | On the north edge of Typhoon Rosa. Credit: Flying With NOAA. |  | TIROS V image of Typhoon Ruth showing well-defined eye. Approximately 300 miles south-southeast of Tokyo. Winds were at 125 knots at time of photo. Credit: NOAA in Space. |
 | TIROS V, launched June 19, 1962, captures an image of Typhoon Ruth showing distinct eye. Credit: NOAA in Space. |  | Typhoon damage from a Category 5 typhoon about a week after the storm. Totally wiped out a coconut and breadfruit plantation. Inhabitants dug pit on highest part of island and put coconut logs over pit for shelter. Some fatalities occurred. Credit: Small World. |
 | Palm trees knocked down by recent typhoon. Credit: Small World. |  | Ragged skyline of coconut plantation after Typhoon Amy. Seen from the TOWNSEND CROMWELL. Credit: Small World. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Philippines | Climate: Tropical, astride typhoon belt. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Typhoon" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 82.00% of the time. "Typhoon" is used about 50 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 82% | 41 | 53,521 |
| Noun (proper) | 18% | 9 | 117,287 |
| Total | 100.00% | 50 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "typhoon": typhoon helen. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "typhoon": typhoon-class. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "typhoon"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | taifun. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | إعصار التيفون. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | тайфун. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 颱風 (hurricane), 颱 , 台风, 台風 . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | tajfun. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | tyfon (typhon), taifun (combination rope, combined rope, consisting of several strands each of which is itself formed from a combination of natural fibre or synthetic fibre yarns and steel wires, the wires being either galvanized or ungalvanized as required by the customer, typhon, with or without a central core). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | tyfoon (typhon). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | tifono. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | گردباد (Cyclone, Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Whirlwind), توفان سخت دریای چین . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | taifuuni (typhon). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | typhon (typhon). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Taifun (typhon). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | κυκλών (cyclone), ανεμοστρόβιλοσ (cyclone, hurricane, tornado, twister, whirlwind), τυφώνασ (hurricane), τυφών (waterspout). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | tájfun, forgószél (cyclonic storm, hurricane, scurry, tornado, whirlwind). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | topan (cyclone, gale, tempest), taufan (cyclone, gale, tempest), badai (cyclone, gale, hurricane, storm). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | tifone (typhon). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 颶風 (hurricane, tornado), 颱風 , 台風 , タイアップ番組 (error which directly allows a run to score, four-in-hand, good hitting in which a run is scored, RBI, RBI hit, run-batted-in, run-batted-in hit, style, tidal, tie game, tie-up program, tight, tights, tile, time, time clock, time is up, time machine, time-card, timely, timeout, timer, times, time-sheet, time-shift, time-stamp, timing, tire, title, title background, title-region, type, typewriter, typing, typist, typography, tyre, video titler). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | たいふう, ぐふう (hurricane, tornado), タイフーン . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 태' (Hurricane). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | taiphoon. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | yphoontay tufão (flaw, tornado). (various references) taifun. (various references) тайфун. (various references) tajfun. (various references) tifón (typhon). (various references) tyfon (typhon). (various references) tayfun, kasırga (cyclone, hurricane, squall, storm, tornado, twister, whirlwind). (various references) тайфун. (various references) bão (tempest). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | typhon. (various references) |
| Arabic | 500-Modern | tafa. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "typhoon": typhoons. (additional references) | |
| |
"Typhoon" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Gyfun, tryphan, Trypho, tyhoon, Typha, typhi, Ty-phoo, Tythrop. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "typhoon" (pronounced tī'fuw"n) |
| 3 | -f uw" n | buffoon. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "h-n-o-o-p-t-y" | |
-1 letter: photon, phyton, python, typhon. | |
-2 letters: hooty, phono, phony, photo, toyon. | |
-3 letters: hoop, hoot, hypo, onto, phon, phot, pony, pooh, poon, tony, toon, toph, toyo, typo. | |
-4 letters: hon, hop, hot, hoy, hyp, noh, noo, not, nth, oho, ooh, oot, opt, pht, poh, pot, tho, thy, ton, too, top, toy, yon. | |
-5 letters: ho, no, oh, on, op. | |
| Words containing the letters "h-n-o-o-p-t-y" | |
+1 letter: typhoons. | |
+2 letters: hypotonia, hypotonic, taphonomy. | |
+3 letters: diphyodont, hypotonias. | |
+4 letters: entomophily, heterophony, hypotension, photolyzing, stereophony, thyrotropin, xylophonist. | |
+5 letters: actinomorphy, anthropology, autohypnoses, autohypnosis, autohypnotic, gymnosophist, hymenopteron, hypotensions, hypotonicity, monophyletic, nonpsychotic, photocopying, photodynamic, phytohormone, posthypnotic, prothonotary, thyrotrophin, thyrotropins, xylophonists. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Translations: Ancient 12. Derivations | 13. Rhymes 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
