monsoon

English borrowed "monsoon" from Portuguese monção and Dutch moesson, both tracing back to Arabic mawsim, meaning "season." That Arabic word in turn comes from wasama, "to mark" or "to brand."

The word began as a term for a marked or fixed season, tied to the idea of something branded or set apart in time. It later narrowed in meaning to describe the seasonal winds of South Asia that sailors and traders relied on to time their voyages.

Its Arabic root wasama, "to mark, to brand," links it conceptually to the idea of marking time — though the facts here don't point to a specific English cognate sharing that root.