typhoon

English borrowed the word around 1588 (spelled Touffon) from Portuguese tufão, which sailors likely picked up from Arabic ṭūfān. That Arabic word may come from Chinese dàfēng ('big wind'), from a native Semitic root meaning the wind circling around, or even from Greek — sources disagree.

The English spelling later shifted toward its current form under the influence of the older Greek word typhon/tuphôn, meaning 'whirlwind,' which had been used in English since the 1550s for a different, more general sense of storm.

It sits near typhon, the Greek word for whirlwind (and name of Typhon, father of the winds), which shaped its modern spelling even though the storm sense itself arrived separately through Portuguese and Arabic.