Original artwork, not a still
Ten thousand thundering typhoons!
— The Adventures of Tintin · 1929
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Haddock's curses are a joke on the very idea of swearing: the more furious he gets, the more nautical and ridiculous the insult becomes. The words mean nothing, which is why they work for every age, and fans quote them as shorthand for splendid, harmless outrage. Typhoons is the grand version, a rage big enough for a whole weather system, and the line stands for the Captain himself.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for The Adventures of TintinShow the scene
Captain Archibald Haddock, the whisky-soaked sailor of Hergé's Tintin albums, makes his debut in The Crab with the Golden Claws, which ran in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir from October 1940 to October 1941 and appeared as a book in 1941. Hergé built him a vocabulary of harmless-sounding oaths because wartime censorship forbade real swearing, and his thunderous exclamations became his trademark. "Ten thousand thundering typhoons!" is one of the best known; it turns up whenever the Captain's temper boils over, and the English editions pair it with "Billions of blue blistering barnacles!" The English translation of the book appeared in 1958.
Sources (3)
- Tintin Wiki: List of Captain Haddock's CursesConcept origin section; entries under TReference checked
- Tintin Wiki: The Crab with the Golden ClawsinfoboxReference checked
- Tintin Wiki: Captain Archibald Haddocklead and infobox quotesReference checked
Context reviewed
