harmattan

n.
A dry dusty wind that blows along the northwest coast of Africa.

[Akan (Twi) haramata, possibly from Arabic ḥarām, evil thing, from ḥarama, to prohibit.]

from Twi
This word originated in Ghana

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and around the world it has many names. There is the world-famous monsoon of Asia, a word ultimately derived from the Portuguese. On the pampas or plains of Argentina, there is the cold westerly pampero. The United States has, among others, the Chinook of the Pacific Northwest, the Santa Ana of southern California, and the blue norther of Texas. In the Alps the foehn (a German word) blows warm. Southern France has its cold northerly mistral, derived from the French word for mastery. In Italy the bora brings cold air from the north and the libeccio (both Italian words) brings warm air from the southwest, while the sirocco (from Arabic) brings hot air from the southeast. The levanter is an easterly wind of the Mediterranean, from French lever, to rise, referring to the rising sun in the east.

Africa has its winds too. The deserts of North Africa have such troublesome winds that they have given three Arabic words for them to English: simoom or simoon, ghibli, and the Egyptian wind called khamsin. Further to the south and west, in Ghana where Twi is spoken, is the dusty wind from the north and east called harmattan. As early as 1671 English adventurers spoke of it, one of the few words of Twi that have entered the English vocabulary.

Does English need so many words for winds? Evidently so, because winds are closely associated with the places where they blow and the type of pleasure or pain they bring. The harmattan of West Africa is a dry wind that blows from the land to the sea during the winter months. In 1845 the naturalist Charles Darwin saw the harmattan "raise clouds of dust high into the atmosphere."

Twi, a member of the Niger-Congo language family, is spoken by about one and a third million people in southern Nigeria. Twi and Fante make up a language group known as Akan used by seven million people, nearly half the population of Ghana. Aside from harmattan, one other English word that may have come from Twi is akee or ackee (1794), the name for a tropical tree whose seed cover is poisonous until mature but is eaten as a delicacy when ripe, at least in Jamaica where it has been transplanted.

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IN BRIEF: n. - A dusty wind from the Sahara that blows toward the western coast of Africa during the winter.

Tutor's tip: This word was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a dusty wind from the Sahara that blows toward the W coast of Africa during the winter

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