![]() "As for your father's good-humoured jests being ever taken up as a serious affair, it really is like raising a storm in a teacup. The Scottish novelist Catherine Sinclair wrote a novel of fashionable society life, Modern Accomplishments, or the march of intellect, in 1838: This appears to be neither original nor English as it is later than the versions above, and the first mention that I can find of it also hails from north of the border. What is the 'tempest raging o'er the realms of ice'? A tempest in a teapot!įinally, we come to the 'storm in a teacup' version of the phrase that we English might imagine is the 'proper' original version. : a situation in which people are upset or angry about something that is not very important. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1825, included this: 'Tempest in a teapot' is the version that is used most often in the USA but which nevertheless appears to have a Scottish rather than an American origin. It's a tempest in a teapot,' he said of the controversy over the painting. The usual British expression is a storm in a teacup. "Each campaign, compared with those of Europe, has been only, in Lord Thurlow's phrase, a storm in a wash-hand basin." a tempest in a teapot US something that is not important but that people are making a lot of unnecessary fuss about. is but a storm in a cream bowl."Īlso, before the 'teacup/teapot' versions were well-established, another nobleman came up with a version that didn't involve the tea-table at all. The Duke of Ormond's letters to the Earl of Arlington, 1678, include this: The first user of the expression in English made no mention of tea-making, although he wasn't far away. The translation of the Netherlands version is 'a storm in a glass of water', and the Hungarian 'a tempest in a potty'. ![]() Other cultures have versions of the phrase in their own languages. The translation of his "Excitabat fluctus in simpulo" is often given as "He was stirring up billows in a ladle". In all cases, the phrase is meant to remind people of the relative unimportance of an issue, suggesting that people would be better served by focusing on problems of greater importance. The expression probably derives from the writing of Cicero, in De Legibus, circa 52BC. Tempest definition: A violent windstorm, frequently accompanied by rain, snow, or hail. You may also hear the phrase tempest in a teacup or tempest in a teapot, depending on the region of the world in which you live. As we will see, the phrase is really ' bad weather in a domestic receptacle of your choice'. In fact, neither the teacup nor the teapot were the first location of the said storm. Readers from England who get irate that 'a tempest in a teapot' is a mangling of their perfectly good phrase 'a storm in a teacup' and that this US interloper only exists because of the neat alliteration of tempest and teapot need to calm down the tempest version is the earlier form and it isn't American in origin. What's the origin of the phrase 'Tempest in a teapot'? Household items What's the meaning of the phrase 'Tempest in a teapot'?Ī tempest in a teapot is a small or insignificant event that is over-reacted to, as if it were of considerably more consequence.
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