Meaning
Two linked senses. Literally, to capture a fortified place by sudden, overwhelming assault - scaling the walls and forcing the gates - rather than by siege. Figuratively, to win people over instantly and completely: to enthrall an audience or gain sudden, sweeping popularity somewhere. Dictionaries differ on the earliest printable evidence: Etymonline dates the phrase to the 1680s, while Wiktionary's earliest supplied quotation is Scott in 1819, and the OED's dated quotations sit behind its paywall. Keep distinct from this site's existing entries 'the calm before the storm', 'a perfect storm', 'a storm is brewing' and 'the eye of the storm'. Regional use: All English-speaking countries.
Origin
The military sense came first: storm had been a verb for attacking a fortified place since the 1640s - Etymonline defines it as attacking and attempting to take a place by scaling walls and forcing gates - and the same entry dates the phrase 'to take (something) by storm' to the 1680s. The earliest quotation on Wiktionary is Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor (1819): 'Sir William took the castle by storm.' The figurative extension to enthralling people is 19th century: Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1841) has a startling interruption that 'took their whole attention by storm', and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) speaks of ideas 'taking my spirit by storm'. The popularity sense - to conquer a place or audience swiftly - remains standard, from Shaw's 1969 line 'Beatlemania took England and Europe by storm' back through a century of performers' biographies. Etymonline adds that barnstorm (1815) plays on taking by storm the barns that served as rural theatres.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- take a place by storm
- take the town by storm
- take the world by storm
Usage Examples
- The young cellist took the festival by storm, earning three encores on her first night.
- The regiment took the fortified town by storm before dawn, scaling the walls under heavy fire.
- Within a year of launch, the messaging app had taken campuses across the country by storm.