"Temblor"

Okay, I'm showing my geek here, but one of the very few places I've ever heard that word is on the name of a multiplayer map for Total Annihilation (it's more sophisticated than it sounds)called "Temblorian Mist", the area in question is misty and prone to small earthquakes.

Temblor is one of two Spanish words that mean "earthquake" (the other is terremoto). I'm not a native Spanish speaker, so I don't know what the distinction is between those two words.

That said, I don't see a good reason for using "temblor" in English. "Earthquake" does the job just as effectively, and in the same number of syllables.

Oh good, I thought it was just me who had missed the memo on this one.

I wonder how it got started? Just a reflection of the changing demographics in the US perhaps?

I answered "Yes - other reason" because I've occasionally described a photo's location as "from the Temblor Range." But other than in the place name, nope.

"Yes - other"

When I was in Chile, people said temblor to mean small earthquakes (terremotos) or tremors. It means tremor in Spanish.

Other: The Calaveras Dam replacement is founded on the Temblor Sandstone so the word gets used quite a bit there.

You see it a lot in older engineering/seismology reports also.

Interesting. I've seen it mostly in news reports. Don't know how or when it got started.

Yes, other; too much time spent perusing the dictionary as a child.

The first few times I saw this, some years ago, I thought there was an R missing.

Well, in spanish we use 3 different words, all 3 meaning almost the same:

Sismo: I think the most appropriate "earthquake" word and most used by seismological agencies.

Temblor: Most used by people, and referring to a not-so-strong earthquake.

Terremoto: Most used by people again, referring to a strong to pretty strong earthquake.

I've also heard the very rare "tremor" in spanish, and the favorite of tv reports "movimiento telúrico".

Boy, are those a lot of words to describe one single thing, heh.

Thanks for the rundown, Miguel!

In English, a "telluric movement" sounds like something unpleasant better discussed by SB's medical bloggers...

Anonymous: I'd say it sounds like something Orac would target on his Friday Dose of Woo.

This is like people in the media and movies using "twister" for tornado. I grew up in Tornado Alley, watched tornadoes on the ground, picked up pieces of a friend's house after a tornado, etc., and I never once heard anyone who lives in the midwest use the term "twister". I think that some people must think it sounds folksy and down-home, but reality is opposite of perception here. People who live around tornadoes are tornado junkies. When the F5 plowed through Oklahoma City in 1999, I was 20 miles away watching the mesocyclone from a lawn chair in the front yard.

You'll know this has hit the baroque phase when there is a major Hollywood movie called, "Temblor!"

I hate the word. It always sounds like someone mispronouncing "trembler." It's not euphonious. Earthquake, quake, and tremor are perfectly sufficient.

The overuse of the word in the media irks me as much as the consistent misuse of epicenter (as a synonym of focus or center).

Mistaking epicenter/hypocenter doesn't actually bug me. Yeah, it's a technical mistake, but I think it's far more important for people to realize that a magnitude 8 earthquake is not a point source than to waste time/memory learning which point source is which.

It's not so much the use of epicenter as a synonym for hypocenter, but when epicenter is used outside of a geological context. Like, say, "Colombia is the epicenter of the cocaine trade." Really? It's on the surface, and not the center of the action?

I call it a sismo (in proper Castellano: Seismo) - "terremoto" is IFAIK only used by people who don't experience them more than a couple of hundred times.

Say "sismo" 50-60 times (each month).

Then try "terremoto" for the same number of times, and you'll understand.

March 2009: http://ssn.dgf.uchile.cl/mapas/mensuales/guc\_eve04\_200903\_map.jpeg - updated each time you reload the page.

Insiting in what Miguel said above, I would like to comment also that "temblor" is just a "shake". It can be a seismic event, it can be what the body makes when it's cold :-).

Cheers

I searched my site just now, and in the past 11 years I have used the word "temblor" just once, with a smirk: "EERI, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, has been out there stalking the wild temblor since 1949." I am so proud.

Taking it way back: the T-bomb (T for Temblor). A weapon that destroys the Kilrathi home planet, ending the threat to the Terran species. Bonus points for figuring out which game.

I fall under the "news report" category. I use it, but only because it's a convention. As a former geologist, I never understood where it came from or why reporters used it. Now I use it to keep from having the word "earthquake" or just "quake" repeated a million times in every article I write. I also use "tremor," "shudder," and "shimmy" with some regularity.

If I thought I could get away with "sismo," I'd use it. Any other suggested synonyms would be gratefully received!

Weird so further to the above is the word "Temblor" used outside the US? I live in New Zealand and we have Earthquakes regularly - especially of note recently and I'd never heard the word in our media and only saw it for the first time in a US report on our quake here yesterday. I had to look it up! LOL

#22 - But the usage of "temblor" in news stories just makes the news sound ridiculous. It's the only place that word is used in English, and it's always used in place of what should be the second instance of the word "earthquake". It's a cliche now, and I wish the news would just drop it. If we're talking about earthquakes (in English), just use the word earthquake. Using "temblor", which is just the Spanish word for earthquake, makes just as much sense as picking some other Spanish word at random (say, baño) and throwing it into English conversations. I mean, how does this sound to you: "A bear destroyed a local family's bathroom this morning. The bear snuck in the back door, dragged a turkey off the kitchen table and holed up in the baño. It then shredded all of the family's toilet paper and went to sleep in the bathtub." And people never pronounce it right in English. It's temBLORE, not TEMblor or TEMbler. Like #15 said, it doesn't sound right.

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2952/
http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2011/06/28/temblor-trouble/