tempest Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a violent commotion or disturbance
    storm.
    • the storms that had characterized their relationship had died away
    • it was only a tempest in a teapot
  2. noun (literary) a violent wind
    • a tempest swept over the island

WordNet

Tem"pest noun
Etymology
OF. tempeste, F. tempête, (assumed) LL. tempesta, fr. L. tempestas a portion of time, a season, weather, storm, akin to tempus time. See Temporal of time.
Definitions
  1. An extensive current of wind, rushing with great velocity and violence, and commonly attended with rain, hail, or snow; a furious storm.
    [We] caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, Each on his rock transfixed. Milton.
  2. Fig.: Any violent tumult or commotion; as, a political tempest; a tempest of war, or of the passions.
  3. A fashionable assembly; a drum. See the Note under Drum, n., 4. Archaic Smollett. ✍ Tempest is sometimes used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, tempest-beaten, tempest-loving, tempest-tossed, tempest-winged, and the like. Syn. -- Storm; agitation; perturbation. See Storm.
Tem"pest transitive verb
Etymology
Cf. OF. tempester, F. tempêter to rage.
Definitions
  1. To disturb as by a tempest. Obs.
    Part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempest the ocean. Milton.
Tem"pest intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To storm. Obs. B. Jonson.

Webster 1913