Crossword clues for simoom
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"hot, dry desert wind," 1790, from Arabic samum "a sultry wind," literally "poisonous," from samma "he poisoned," from sam "poison."
Wiktionary
n. A hot, dry, suffocating, dust-laden wind of the desert, particularity of Arabia, Syria, and neighboring countries, generated by the extreme heat of the parched deserts or sandy plains.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Simoom ( samūm; from the root s-m-m, "to poison") is a strong, dry, dust-laden local wind that blows in the Sahara, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and the deserts of Arabian Peninsula. Alternative spellings include samiel, sameyel, samoon, samun, simoun, and simoon. Its temperature may exceed and the humidity may fall below 10%. Simoom winds have an alternative type occurring in the region of Central Asia known as "Garmsil" (гармсель).
The storm moves in cyclone (circular) form, carrying clouds of dust and sand, and produces on humans and animals a suffocating effect. The name means "poison wind" and is given because the sudden onset of simoom may also cause heat stroke. This is attributed to the fact that the hot wind brings more heat to the body than can be disposed of by the evaporation of perspiration.
A 19th-century account of simoom in Egypt reads:
Egypt is also subject, particularly during the spring and summer, to the hot wind called the "samoom," which is still more oppressive than the khamasin winds, but of much shorter duration, seldom lasting longer than a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. It generally proceeds from the south-east or south-south-east, and carries with it clouds of dust and sand.
Usage examples of "simoom".
A large part of his fortune he gained in a triangular trade among the worlds of Simoom, Yarkona and Catava.
The trade worked like this: on Simoom he would fill the holds of his ship with thousands of astrier families.
Architects could never be sure when Yarkona would close its cities to them and they would be isolated on Simoom, perhaps to suffer pogroms and genocide.
On Simoom he would sell these holy computers to the many Cybernetic churches there.
Hanuman, who had studied more history than had Danlo, told him how the cetics, five thousand years previously on Simoom, had once been their own order.
And did you know the cetics established themselves on Simoom largely because plants grow there unlike any others in the known universe?
He realized that this was probably a Simoom antique, a frivolous piece of technology designed by cetics to read the simpler emotions.
The Simoom cantors believed that as it is with numbers, so it is with the hierarchies of the gods.
The logic was as harsh and merciless as Alexandar of Simoom himself: If there is no true creation then there is no true reality.
And there were old sects, too: Friends of God off Simoom, and ancient Maggids chanting their histories of what they called the first Diaspora, as well as the ever-present autists, harijan, hibakusha and refugees from the stars of the Vild.
Danlo wanted to tell them that Yarkona was a harsh but beautiful world a hundred light-years coreward from Neverness, near Simoom and Urradeth.
What though the fierce Simoom blew ever hot within the sail Of her desire?
The drought was constantly increasing, and the heat none the less for the wind being north, this wind being the simoom of the Pampas.
Prince of Scotland and myself in the desert, reducing us to save our lives by the speed of our horses--not that he had stirred up the Maronites to attack us upon this very occasion, had I not brought up unexpectedly so many Arabs as rendered the scheme abortive-- not for any or all of these crimes does he now lie there, although each were deserving such a doom--but because, scarce half an hour ere he polluted our presence, as the simoom empoisons the atmosphere, he poniarded his comrade and accomplice, Conrade of Montserrat, lest he should confess the infamous plots in which they had both been engaged.
This child of the desert was in his element, and with his black face and sparkling eyes appeared, in the cloud of dust he raised, like the genius of the simoom and the god of the hurricane.