I’ve decided to start a summer series on the origins of clichés. My starting point will be The Dictionary of Clichés: A Word Lover’s Guide to 4,000 Overused Phrases and Almost-Pleasing Platitudes by Christine Ammer. Today we’ll look at a few clichés on the theme of storms beginning with “steal one’s thunder,” which I actually heard about on the Strong Sense of Place podcast (highly recommended for interesting trivia even if you don’t read the book recommendations!).
To Steal Someone’s Thunder
“To ruin or detract from the effect of someone’s accomplishment by anticipating or copying it.”
Playwright John Dennis (1657-1734) invented a “thunder machine” (a rattling sheet of tin) as a sound effect to use in his play Appius and Virginia (1709). Only a few days after his play flopped the thunder machine was used in a performance of Macbeth, prompting Dennis to say, “They steal my thunder!” Another account (cited in Wikipedia) states that Dennis exclaimed, “That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my plays.”
A Tempest in a Teapot
“A storm over a trifle; much ado about nothing.”
Interestingly, this expression is the twentieth century American version of earlier sayings, such as “a storm in a cream bowl” (1678), “a tempest in a glass of water” (c. 1790), and “a storm in a hand-wash basin” (c. 1830). “A storm in a teacup” is still the version preferred in Britain, but I must admit I prefer the one that alliterates.
Any Port in a Storm
“Any relief is welcome when one is in great difficulty.”
The first known publication of the phrases is is Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1759) by John Cleland. (Ammer also writes that the phrase appears in an eighteenth-century play by James Cobb, but I couldn’t find any more information on this assertion.) “Any port in a storm” was used as a political slogan in the presidential campaign of Winfield Scott in 1841.
The Calm Before the Storm
“A sense of foreboding, during a particularly serene period, that violence is on its way.”
The first recorded use of the similar phrase “the calm before the tempest” is found in the play The Dumb Knight (1608) by Gervase Markham and Lewis Machin. The word “tempest” was replaced by “storm” in The Remarks of Jeremiah Jingle (1807). Of course, the idea behind this phrase is based on the change in barometric pressure that occurs before a storm.
To Take by Storm
“To become quickly famous or popular.”
This phrase originally referred to storming a fortification. In Barnaby Rudge (1841) by Charles Dickens we find the sentence, “Nor is it necessary to speculate on these matters, for a startling interruption occurred at that moment, which took their whole attention by storm.” The phrase occurs with something closer to the current meaning in The Coming of the Friars (1889) by Augustus Jessop: “The Franciscans… were taking the world by storm.”
To Weather the Storm
“To survive hard times.”
This phrase, referring to a ship making it through harsh weather, has been used figuratively since about 1650. One example is “[They] weathered together the fiercest storms of faction” in Macauley’s The History of England (1849).
Very interesting This is history earlier than I realized