Nice and Interesting for a Small fortune which is Pretty good.

[Carol]

Stephen Vandecasteele:
>  > > > > Its nothing, its a tempest in a tea kettle.
> > > <snip>    
>  
> Geoff:
> > > > Surely you mean a storm in a teacup?
> > > > :-)
> 
> Carol: 
> > > Not a tempest in a teapot? Do we really all say it that differently?
>  
> > > Carol, now wondering how Mrs. Figg would say it
>  
> Steve:
> > "A tempest in a tea cup" is the proper saying.
> 
> Geoff:
> (deleting all the unwanted ">")
> 
> The UK version, which I think Mrs. Figg would also use, is the one I
quoted.
>
Carol responds:
But Mrs. Figg always gives a WW twist to her sayings: "The cat's among
the pixies again," for example. So I wondered how she would alter that
one to make it different from what a British Muggle like Petunia would
say.

As for which is the "proper" saying (to quote Steve, above), I think
our four variants amply demonstrate that the "proper" version is
regional. I've never heard any version except "tempest in a teapot"
till now--never "tea cup." I'm guessing that mine is the standard
American version. "Tea kettle," I assume, is the British version. As
for "storm in a tea cup," it doesn't even alliterate! At least Steve's
"proper" version alliterates. (It's probably an American variant like
mine.)

I did a Google search with these results:

Storm in a teacup, 162,000 pages
Tempest in a teapot, 115,000 pages
Tempest in a teacup, 35,000 pages
Tempest in a tea kettle, 163 pages (Tempest in a teakettle, 462 pages)

That makes Geoff's (British) version the winner and my (American)
version a close second. Steve's "proper" version is a weak third, and
New Steve's version (which also sounds British to me) a feeble fourth.
All, however, appear to be recognized variants or they wouldn't show
up on Google. Not that Google is by any means the ultimate authority,
of course, but it provides a good indication of the relative frequency
or popularity of each version.

Some of you may enjoy this British writer's brief commentary on the
phrase:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tem1.htm

Nice to think that the (alliterative) American version probably came
first. Unless, of course, we consider the Latin version as the
ancestor of them all. (The Romans, not being tea drinkers, didn't have
teapots *or* teacups.)

Carol, wondering how zanooda would translate *this* idiom regardless
of variant