tsunami
pronunciation
How to pronounce tsunami in British English:
UK [tsuːˈnɑːmi]
How to pronounce tsunami in American English:
US [tsuːˈnɑːmi]
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- Noun:
- a huge destructive wave (especially one caused by an earthquake)
Word Origin
- tsunami
- tsunami: [19] Japanese tsunami means literally ‘harbour waves’, a reference to the devastating effect Pacific tsunamis have had on Japanese coastal communities. For most of the 20th century the term was largely restricted to the specialized vocabulary of oceanographers and earth scientists, lay people preferring the more familiar tidal wave (a misnomer: strictly speaking, a tidal wave is one caused by the movement of the tide, whereas a tsunami is specifically generated by an undersea earthquake), but the disastrous inundation of southern Asian coasts at the end of 2004 lodged it firmly in the language’s everyday lexicon.
- tsunami (n.)
- 1896, in reference to the one that struck Japan that year on June 15, from Japanese tsunami, from tsu "harbor" + nami "waves."
Example
- 1. We understand it was an enormous earthquake and tsunami .
- 2. Those tsunami victims are in evacuation centers .
- 3. One early tsunami was known to historians .
- 4. A gray tsunami will be sweeping the planet .
- 5. The japanese tsunami fits this template .