take by storm

English

WOTD – 3 August 2007

take by storm (third-person singular simple present takes by storm, present participle taking by storm, simple past took by storm, past participle taken by storm)

(transitive, military) To capture by means of a sudden, overwhelming attack.
The soldiers took the castle by storm.
(transitive, idiomatic) To seize, overpower, or captivate in a sudden and forceful manner.
- 1841, Charles Dickens, chapter 71, in Barnaby Rudge:
  [A] startling interruption occurred at that moment, which took their whole attention by storm.
- 1847, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 33, in Jane Eyre:
  How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot tell.
(transitive, idiomatic) To rapidly gain great popularity in (a place).
- 1908 February 19, Jack London, chapter 1, in The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC:
  This obscure reference ["Blind Tom"] applies to a blind negro musician who took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
- 1969, Arnold Shaw, The Rock Revolution, page 1:
  Beatlemania took England and Europe by storm and proceeded to inundate American teenagers.

To capture by means of a sudden, overwhelming attack

To rapidly gain popularity in a place