Meanings
plural email storms
- computingA sudden spike in emails within an email list, usually caused by thousands of individuals sending reply all emails within a short period of time.
Microsoft is rolling out a new reply-all protection feature for Office 365 and Exchange Online. It’s designed to prevent email storms, when hundreds or thousands of people start replying to an email thread after someone forgot to BCC everyone or a distribution list was misconfigured.
2020 May 10, Tom Warren, “Microsoft now blocks reply-all email storms to end our inbox nightmares”, in The VergeSynonyms: replyallpocalypse, reply all storm
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA sudden spike in emails within an email list, usually caused by thousands of individuals sending reply all emails within a short period of time.
Cite this entry
email storm. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/email%20storm
“email storm.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/email%20storm. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “email storm,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/email%20storm.
Source: email storm on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.