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

[Chris Waigl]

Even though Garson has already illustrated a usage from 1995, I'll add how
and when I first came across "firenado". In 2013, a video from the Alaska
(State) Division of Forestry was handed around in my circles. The WaPo even
wrote an article on it. (At that point, full disclosure, I was in my first
year of a PhD that deals with wildfire in Alaska. Those black spruce sure
burn well. This fire ended up at ~20,000 acres without doing any major
damage.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/08/20/firenado-wild-fire-tornado-in-alaska-video/

Chris

On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 3:36 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>


-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

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