Etymology and the winds of change. There's a lot of weather about these days, isn't there? Until relatively recently the weather was just what we saw when we drew back the curtains and looked out of the bedroom window in the morning, but now things have changed dramatically. These days every time we turn on the TV or open a newspaper it is quite ‘usual’ for some part of the world to be experiencing ‘unusual’ weather. The Arctic is not yet a tropical paradise but it is starting to move in that direction and England, parts of which a mere year or so ago were drying up like so many dead leaves, has in recent months seen some of the worst floods in its history. And who among us had heard of the word tsunami (Japanese for ‘harbour wave’) before the terrible events of December 2004 in Thailand and Indonesia?