Meaning
A place or period of deceptive calm right at the centre of a crisis or controversy; the lull is real but temporary, because turmoil surrounds it on every side. Note a drifting loose sense meaning simply 'the thick of the controversy', which some dictionaries record but stylists discourage. Neutral and vivid; careful writers object when it is used to mean the most chaotic point rather than the calm centre. Regional use: General English.
Origin
Straight from cyclone meteorology. The eye is the roughly circular zone of calm, often clear air at the centre of a tropical cyclone, typically 30-65 km across, ringed by the eyewall where the storm's worst winds blow. The Oxford English Dictionary dates 'the eye of the storm (also hurricane, etc.)' from 1842; its first citation is an 1842 item in the Wabash Express of Terre Haute, Indiana, and the sense is marked 'frequently figurative'. A note in Science in 1884 already recorded the sailors' name, 'the eye of the storm', for the dreadful calm within the whirl. The figurative transfer to any calm centre amid turmoil followed naturally in the 20th century, and Grammarphobia noted in 2008 that the phrase is often misused for the most intense part of a mess rather than the calm at its centre.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- at the eye of the storm
- eye of the hurricane
- in the eye of the storm
- the calm eye of the storm
Usage Examples
- The ceasefire brought no real peace, only the eye of the storm while both sides rearmed.
- With the exams over but the results pending, she was living in the eye of the storm.
- The mayor's quiet press office sits in the eye of the storm that surrounds the housing scandal.