Tempest, n.
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.]
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.
Note: Tempest is sometimes used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, tempest-beaten, tempest-loving, tempest-tossed, tempest-winged, and the like.
1 more senses
Syn. -- Storm; agitation; perturbation. See Storm.
2 other Webster entries under this spelling
Tempest, v. t.
To disturb as by a tempest. [Obs.] Part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempest the ocean. Milton.
Tempest, v. i.
To storm. [Obs.] B. Jonson.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for tempest; he lists it under storm.
Where he writes about it:
A tempest is a storm of extreme violence, always attended with some precipitation, as of rain, from the atmosphere. — from storm
In the moral and figurative use, storm and tempest are not closely discriminated, except that tempest commonly implies greater intensity. — from storm
We speak of agitation of feeling, disturbance of mind, a storm of passion, a tempest of rage. — from storm