Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Tempest

Tem′pest (tĕm′pĕst), n. [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.

☞ 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, v. t. [Cf. OF. tempester, F. tempêter to rage.] To disturb as by a tempest. [Obs.]

Part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempest the ocean. Milton.

Tem′pest, v. i. To storm. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty.