different between tempest vs gail

English

Etymology

From Old French tempeste (French tempête), from Latin tempestas (“storm”), from tempus (“time, weather”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?t?mp?st/
• Hyphenation: tem?pest

Noun

tempest (plural tempests)

1. A storm, especially one with severe winds.
   • 1847, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, ch. 16:

     As every sailor knows, a spicy gale in the tropic latitudes of the Pacific is far different from a tempest in the howling North Atlantic.
2. Any violent tumult or commotion.
   • 1914, Ambrose Bierce, "One Officer, One Man":

     They awaited the word "forward"—awaited, too, with beating hearts and set teeth the gusts of lead and iron that were to smite them at their first movement in obedience to that word. The word was not given; the tempest did not break out.

3. (obsolete) A fashionable social gathering; a drum.

Derived terms

• tempest in a teapot
• tempestuous

Translations

Verb

tempest (third-person singular simple present tempests, present participle tempesting, simple past and past participle tempested)

1. (intransitive, rare) To storm.
2. (transitive, chiefly poetic) To disturb, as by a tempest.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VII:

     . . . the seal

     And bended dolphins play; part huge of bulk,

     Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

     Tempest the ocean.

   • 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Drowned Lover," in Poems from St. Irvyne:

     Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,

     And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air.

Translations

References

• Webster, Noah (1828) , “tempest”, in An American Dictionary of the English Language
• tempest in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “tempest” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

Middle English

Etymology

Old French tempeste

Noun

tempest (plural tempests)

1. tempest (storm)

Scottish Gaelic

Verb

gail (past ghail, future gailidh, verbal noun gal, past participle gailte)

1. Alternative form of guil

Noun

gail m

1. genitive singular of gal