[Ads-l] firenado (was Re: QOTY nominee: "Truth isn't truth")

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

John Kelly mentioned that "firenado" was in use by 1995. Here is a
part of a Usenet message containing "firenado" in April 1995. This
might be the citation Kelly is talking about.

Usenet message
Date: 1995/04/14
Newsgroup: sci.geo.meteorology
From: jcl... at lamar.ColoState.EDU (James Clarke)
Subject: Books: HEAVY WEATHER

https://goo.gl/SuGT1N
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.geo.meteorology/iwuKG0uDY0g/YwisHuPXCYAJ

[Begin excerpt]
Boy, I wish that guy would have called me before he finished the book!
 With lower to mid stratospheric air and no clouds, the potential temp
is about 500F.  Instead of a COLD blast of air, he could have
described a funnel of this F6 setting fire to the dry plains, a
FIRENADO!   Oh well...
[End excerpt]

Garson


On Sun, Aug 19, 2018 at 10:47 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2018 at 8:13 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> On a less political and WOTYer note, how established was the blend
>> “firenado” before the conflagrations of the last month or two in Redding
>> and elsewhere?
>
>
> John Kelly has this to say on the Oxford Dictionaries blog:
>
> https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2018/08/10/weekly-word-watch-snapchat-dysmorphia-hothouse-firenado/
>
> "The Oxford English Dictionary currently enters _fire tornado_ in 1871,
> while the blended _firenado_ appears at least by 1995 and became more
> common in the 2000-10s. _Snownado_ and _gustnado_ are sometimes used for
> other strangely spinning weather events -- though many may best know
> _-nado_ as a combining form in the _Sharknado_ film series."
>
> More "-nados" in this 2014 column by Mark Peters:
>
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/snownados-in-hothlanta-the-world-of-weather-blends/
>
> --bgz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org