thunderbolt
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈθʌndə(ɹ)ˌboʊlt/
Forms: form: thunderbolts
Etymology: From thunder + bolt.
Senses: examples: text: News of the actress’s death came as a thunderbolt to her fans.
text: Our quiuering Lances ſhaking in the aire, / And bullets like Ioues dreadfull Thunderbolts, / Enrolde in flames and fiery ſmoldering miſtes, / Shall threat the Gods more than Cyclopian warres, […]
ref: c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene iii:
text: And the sword that had visited Earth from so far away smote like the falling of thunderbolts [...] and the runes in Alveric’s far-travelled sword exulted, and roared at the elf-knight; until in the dark of the wood, amongst branches severed from disenchanted trees, with a blow like that of a thunderbolt riving an oak-tree, Alveric slew him.
ref: 1924, Lord Dunsany, chapter III, in The King of Elfland's Daughter, New York: G.P. Puttnam's Sons, page 30:
text: He describes the operation thus: "The heavy ram employed to impart the finishing strokes, hoisted up with double purchase and snail's pace to the summit of the Piling Engine, and then falling down like a thunderbolt on the head of the devoted timber, driving it perhaps a single half inch in to the stratum below, is well calculated to put to the test the virtue of patience, while it illustrates the old adage of—slow and sure."
ref: 1952 July, W. R. Watson, “Sankey Viaduct and Embankment”, in Railway Magazine, page 487:
glosses: A flash of lightning accompanied by a crash of thunder.
examples: text: the Scipios' worth, those thunderbolts of war
ref: 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
text: A greater wreck, a deeper fall, / A shock to one—a thunderbolt to all.
ref: 1819, Lord Byron, Mazeppa, a Poem, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza I, page 5, lines 13–14:
glosses: An event that is terrible, horrific or unexpected.
examples: text: a thunder-bolt of warre Striking all Nations
ref: 1627, G[eorge] H[akewill], An Apologie of the Power and Prouidence of God in the Gouernment of the World. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Iohn Lichfield and William Turner, […], →OCLC:
glosses: Vehement threatening or censure; especially, ecclesiastical denunciation; fulmination.
examples: text: Substitute Niko Kranjcar's injury-time thunderbolt gave Tottenham a dramatic win over Bolton.
ref: 2011 February 5, Michael Kevin Darling, “Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton”, in BBC:
topics: ball-games
games
hobbies
lifestyle
soccer
sports
glosses: A very powerful shot.
topics: biology
history
human-sciences
natural-sciences
paleontology
sciences
glosses: A belemnite, or thunderstone.
topics: government
heraldry
hobbies
lifestyle
monarchy
nobility
politics
glosses: A charge in the form of two joined bundles with four rays of lightning emerging from them, resembling the thunderbolt of Jupiter.
glosses: A daring or irresistible hero.
Derived terms: thunderbolt beetle
Related terms: lightning bolt
thunderclap
thunderstroke