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a storm in a teacup

phrase/ə stɔːm ɪn ə ˈtiːkʌp/

B2CEFR level
48/100Rarity: uncommon
NeutralRegister

A great deal of anger or excitement about something that is really quite trivial.

The tabloids treated the minister's remark as a scandal, but it was a storm in a teacup that was forgotten within days.

Similar: much ado about nothing, tempest in a teapot

Topic: Idioms & phrasal verbs in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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