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Where Did the Word ‘nor’easter’ Come From?
The term 'nor'easter' evolved from a 16th-century navigation phrase and became popular in media around 2000 to describe coastal Atlantic storms on the U.S. East Coast.
- This week, major newspapers published several pieces about the storm, and weather forecasters at the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel, and CNN called it a nor'easter.
- In the 16th century, navigation manuals recorded 'nor'east,' with John Davis's 1595 The Seaman's Secrets and the Oxford English Dictionary citing examples from the 1590s; by the mid‑19th century, 'nor'easter' appeared in U.S. newspapers and earlier in The Hull Packet and Humber Mercury.
- Linguists and former mariners campaigned against the term, with Mark Liberman and Edgar Comee mailing postcards and admonitions to challenge what dissenting commentators called pretentious usage.
- Google Ngrams registers a shift from 'northeaster' to 'nor'easter' circa 2000, though The Boston Globe and The New York Times resisted the contraction into the 2000s.
- Communities remain buried and are still digging out from MONDAY's blizzard that dropped about 30 inches in Bristol County, while Taunton DPW crews have cleared roughly 300 miles of roadway and meteorologists say these storms form offshore between Georgia and New Jersey.
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17 Articles
17 Articles
Where did the word ‘nor’easter’ come from?
The contracted form of "nor'easter" has inspired feelings as strong as the storm's gusts. Its various detractors have called it "a fake, pseudo-Yankee neologism," a "festering sore in today's marine and weather journalism" and "faker to me than the lederhosen at the Biergarten in Walt Disney World."
·Albuquerque, United States
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Coverage Details
Total News Sources17
Leaning Left1Leaning Right0Center16Last UpdatedBias Distribution94% Center
Bias Distribution
- 94% of the sources are Center
94% Center
C 94%
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