Meaning
Says that trouble, conflict or a crisis is quietly developing and will probably break out soon. Applied to quarrels, politics, markets or any gathering tension, and often met in other tenses, as in a storm was brewing or there is a storm brewing over the pay dispute. Neutral, slightly dramatic register; a staple of news headlines and previews of conflict. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The metaphor is nearly as old as the word itself. Etymonline dates the intransitive figurative sense of brew, 'be in preparation' with reference to trouble and the like, to around 1300; the verb is Old English breowan, to make ale, and the image is of something bubbling away unseen until it is ready. Weather was brewed the same way: Shakespeare has Trinculo say 'and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i' th' wind' in The Tempest (written about 1610-11), which is weather in the story but already the fixed collocation. The pattern with storm standing for trouble rather than weather settles in as a stock phrase of journalism in the 19th and 20th centuries; no single first use of that figurative form is recorded in the standard references.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a storm was brewing
- a tempest is brewing
- there's a storm brewing
- trouble is brewing
- trouble's brewing
Usage Examples
- Union leaders hinted that a storm was brewing over the unpaid overtime.
- You could feel a storm brewing in the committee long before anyone raised a voice.
- A storm is brewing between the two ministries over who controls the new infrastructure fund.