[kedean]

I'm going to disagree with you there. Anecdotally, I've lived in tornado alley my whole life and nobody has ever referred to a tornado as a cyclone in real-life conversation, although I'd know what they're referring to based on context clues.

Outside the heartland, the NHC categorizes many storms below the level of hurricane (64 knot sustained winds) as various kinds of cyclone (tropical cyclone, extratropical cyclone, potential tropical cyclone, post-tropical cyclone, alongside depressions).

In fact, in meteorology terms, a tornado is definitively different from a cyclone (a column of rotating area vs an area of area rotating around a low-pressure system). Hurricanes and typhoons are both kinds cyclones.