The story
More than two thousand years ago, the Roman statesman Cicero wrote about a local politician named Gratidius. Gratidius, he said, “raised a tempest in a ladle, as the saying is.” Even then, it was an old joke.
Over the centuries the tiny storm moved from one small container to another. In 1678, the Duke of Ormond called a quarrel “a storm in a cream bowl.” The French spoke of a tempest in a glass of water, and in 1830 an English magazine mentioned a storm in a wash-hand basin.
The teapot arrived in 1825, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, a Scottish journal: “A tempest in a teapot!” A Scottish novelist, Catherine Sinclair, gave us “a storm in a teacup” in 1838.
Today Americans mostly say tempest in a teapot, while the British say storm in a teacup. Both versions began in Scotland.
