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tempestuous.

Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a tempest; also, of a place: frequently experiencing tempests; (very) stormy.

11 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/tɛmˈpɛs.tjʊ.əs/Received-Pronunciation/-t͡ʃʊ-/Received-Pronunciation/tɛmˈpɛs.tʃu.əs/General-American/tɛmˈpɛs.tju.əs/General-American
  1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a tempest; also, of a place: frequently experiencing tempests; (very) stormy.

  2. Characterized by disorderly, frenetic, or violent activity; stormy, tumultuous, turbulent; also, of a person, their behaviour or nature, etc.: characterized by bouts of bad temper or sudden changes of mood; impetuous, stormy, temperamental.

    figuratively
    After their tempestuous argument, they did not speak to each other for weeks.
Where this word comes from

From Late Middle English tempestious, tempestous, tempestuous (“stormy, turbulent, tempestuous”), from Anglo-Norman tempestous, and Old French tempesteus, tempestos, tempestous, tempestuose (modern French tempétueux), and directly from its etymon Latin tempestuōsus (“stormy, turbulent, tempestuous; impetuous”), from tempestās, tempestūs (“point or period of time; season; weather, specifically bad weather; storm, tempest”) (from tempus (“period of time; (rare) weather”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *temh₁- (“to cut”) or *ten- (“to extend, stretch”)) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; overly; prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns). The English word is equivalent to tempest + -uous (a variant of -ous (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, denoting the presence of a quality, typically in abundance)).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.