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TYPHOID sMOKE

3/12/2020

1 Comment

 
I recently made the connection that typhus and typhoid are different diseases. The latter was more recently discovered; it was thought to be a variant of typhus, so they just added the suffix -oid (used to denote resemblance) and that was that. Typhus comes from the Ancient Greek word typhos, which meant "smoke"; the term was used by Hippocrates to describe conditions of stupor, and people later on thought that, since the affliction could cause feelings of drowsiness, it was an appropriate moniker. Typhos is from typhein, an earlier verb meaning "to smoke". That's thought to be from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction dheu, which meant "dust" or "vapor" but also had connotations of sensory confusion that led to the development of words such as deaf and typhoon​. 
1 Comment
Benedicte Irgens
11/2/2023 03:07:26 am

Dear Etymology Nerd, I teach Japanese at a Norwegian university, and recently taught my students the word «taifuu» (台風) which means «typhoon, strong wind» - in Japanese, literally «winds from Taiwan». In Chinese, the characters are 大風, «big wind». Now one student tells me that «typhoon» may stem not from the Chinese/Japanese, but from the greek «typhon», and I was surprised at this. (In Norwegian, the word for typhoon is «tyfon», pronounced as it is written.) Could you help me here? Is there any connection at all between the Greek typhon and the East-Asian taifun? If yes, what is it? Where the ancient Greeks in contact with the Chinese at any point? Or is it possible for a word to have two, converging etymologies? I have been searching the internet, but can’t seem to find a clear answer. Looking forward to your response!

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