tornado
/tɔɹˈneɪ.doʊ/noun, verb
tornado is spelled T-O-R-N-A-D-O. The wrong spelling people search most is tornato: about 140 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 161 of all searches for the word. Tornado is a noun meaning “A violent wind in the form of a mobile, rapidly rotating, funnel cloud that has contacted the ground”. The plural of tornado is tornadoes or tornados.
How many letters and syllables are in tornado?
| Letters | 7: T-O-R-N-A-D-O |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 6.6 times per million words; the 9,313th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, tornato, about 140 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell tornado?
Tornado is spelled T-O-R-N-A-D-O. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 99 of the searches for tornado in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is tornado?
Tornado appears 6.6 times per million words in written English, the 9,313th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce tornado?
- UK /tɔː(ɹ)ˈneɪ.dəʊ/
- US /tɔɹˈneɪ.doʊ/
Tornado has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-tornado.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with tornado?
3 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as tornado from its last stressed vowel (/eɪdoʊ/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: odorant, tandoor, donator, rotonda.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of tornado
- tornadoes plural
- tornados plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- tornadoing participle, present
- tornadoed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does tornado mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A violent wind in the form of a mobile, rapidly rotating, funnel cloud that has contacted the ground.
verb
- 1
To sweep through something violently.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Tornado in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense violent windstorm:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tornade |
| German | Tornado, Windhose |
| Portuguese | ciclone, tornado |
| Spanish | tornado, ciclón, tifón, huracán, baguio |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does tornado come from?
From earlier English ternado, attested since the 1550s as a nautical term for a windy thunderstorm. From Spanish tronada (“thunderstorm”), from tronar (“to thunder”), from Latin tonō (“to thunder”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tenh₂- (“to thunder”). The o and r were reversed in English (metathesis) under influence of Spanish tornar (“to twist, to turn”), from Latin tornō (“to turn”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).