Stormy is what the weather is doing when the wind throws the rain sideways and the sky goes the colour of slate. Branches down across the road, the sea white at the edges, the ferry cancelled.
A stormy night, a stormy crossing, a stormy week at sea. The word leaves the sky just as readily: a stormy marriage is one of shouting and slammed doors, a stormy meeting is one nobody enjoyed, and a stormy look across the table needs no words at all. Stormy says how something feels rather than how much damage it did, so it fits a hurricane and a blustery Tuesday alike. There is no verb hiding inside it — the verb is storm, as in he stormed out. The comparative is stormier, and the noun behind all of it is storm.
1adjectivestormyOf weather: with strong wind, heavy rain and rough seas.
“They cancelled the crossing after three stormy days in a row.”
synonyms: wild, tempestuous
2adjectiveturbulentFull of anger, shouting or sudden crises.
“Their marriage was stormy from the start, all silences and slammed doors.”
synonyms: turbulent, tempestuous
Stormy is storm with -y bolted on, and it has been that way since Old English stormiġ. The same trick took hold all round the North Sea: Dutch stormig, German stürmisch, Swedish stormig, each of them a storm turned into a description of a day.
Old English
*stormiġ — stormy
Middle English
stormy
English, today
stormy
From Middle English stormy, stormi, from Old English stormiġ (“stormy”), equivalent to storm + y. Cognate with Dutch stormig (“stormy”), German stürmisch (“stormy”), Swedish stormig (“stormy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA