sb. Forms: see THUNDER sb. and BOLT sb.1; (9 dial. dunderbolt).
1. A supposed bolt or dart formerly (and still vulgarly) believed to be the destructive agent in a lightning-flash when it ‘strikes’ anything; a flash of lightning conceived as an intensely hot solid body moving rapidly through the air and impinging upon something: in mythology an attribute of Jove, Thor, or other deity. Cf. BOLT sb.1 2.
In later use often a vague rhetorical or poetic expression for a destructive lightning-flash or thunderstroke.
c. 1440. Alphabet of Tales, 49. Þis womman was burnyd to dede with a thondre-bolte.
1535. [see BOLT sb.1 2].
1560. Daus, trans. Sleidane’s Comm., 462. In the beginning of … Ianuary … were horrible tempestes, thondering, and lightening, and thonderboltes.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., II. 69. Men should dread the thunder-bolt, when they see the lightning.
1710. W. King, Heathen Gods & Heroes, x. (1722), 33. All the rest [of the Giants] … fell by the Thunderbolts of Jupiter.
1890. W. E. Norris, Misadventure, xvii. The intelligence … had fallen upon him like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
b. An imaginary or conventional representation of the above as an emblem of a deity, a heraldic bearing, etc.
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., On medals, the thunder-bolt is sometimes found to accompany the emperors heads; as that of Augustus.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 489. The head of Medusa, or the Furies, thunderbolts, and other symbols of horror.
1894. Parker’s Gloss. Her. s.v., Azure, a sun between three thunderbolts, winged and shafted or.
2. fig. Something very destructive, terrible, or startling; esp. an awful denunciation, censure, or threat proceeding from a high authority; some sudden or unexpected, and hence startling event or piece of news, usually untoward.
1559. Primer, in Priv. Prayers (1851), 91. To the thunderbolts of thy word put violence.
1591. Spenser, Ruins of Rome, 150. To dart abroad the thunder bolts of warre.
1633. T. Stafford, Pac. Hib., I. xv. (1821), 168. Terrified with the Priests Thunderbolts of Excommunication.
1787. Mme. D’Arblay, Diary, 30 Jan. This information was a thunderbolt to her.
1860. Reade, Cloister & H., xxxviii. Awaking from the stupor into which this thunderbolt of tyranny had thrown him.
b. Applied to a person noted for violent or destructive action; one who acts with furious and resistless energy.
1593. Harvey, Pierce’s Super., Wks. (Grosart), II. 48. Oratours … infinitely ouermatched by this hideous thunderbolt in humanity.
1599. Hayward, 1st Pt. Hen. IV., 2. Prince Edward the thunderbolt of warre in his time.
1708. Mrs. Centlivre, Busie Body, III. iii. I have done you a piece of Service; I told the old Thunderbolt, that the Gentleman that was gone in, was [etc.].
1742. R. Blair, Grave, 123. Where are the mighty thunderbolts of war? The Roman Cæsars?
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Napoleon, Wks. (Bohn), I. 372. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his entrenchments.
3. Locally applied to various stones, fossils, or mineral concretions, formerly or vulgarly supposed to be thunderbolts (sense 1): a. a belemnite or other fossil cephalopod; b. a flint celt or similar prehistoric implement; c. a mass or nodule of iron pyrites occurring in chalk.
1618. Latham, 2nd Bk. Falconry (1633), 160. Take a thunderbolt, the which is found most commonly in the fields, in some channell or watercourse,… put it into a hot fire and burne it well.
1634–5. Brereton, Trav. (Chetham Soc.), 41. The dart of a thunderbolt about the length and thickness of your little finger.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 431, ¶ 3. Thunderbolts, a certain long, round bluish Stone, which I found among the Gravel in our Garden.
1814. Scott, Diary, 8 Aug., in Lockhart. The most superb collection of the stone axes … called celts. The Zetlanders call them thunderbolts, and keep them in their houses as a receipt against thunder.
1826. Polwhele, Trad. & Recoll., ix. II. 607. For ‘the reumatis’ … I knew an old woman who used to boil a celt (vulgarly a dunderbolt or thunderbolt) for some hours, and then dispense her water to the diseased.
1862. Athenæum, 30 Aug., 280. Go … into any of the more productive chalk-pits…, and the workmen will offer you fragmentary ‘thunderbolts’ (belemnites) and nautili.
d. Erroneously or by confusion applied to a meteoric stone or meteorite.
1802. [see THUNDER-STONE 2].
1830. Herschel, Stud. Nat. Phil., 120. These circumstances … long caused them to be confounded with an effect of lightning, and called thunderbolts.
4. Applied (chiefly locally) to various plants: a. the corn poppy (= thunder-flower (b), THUNDER sb. 6); b. the bladder campion; c. the white campion; d. a species of iris, Iris Xiphium.
1847–78. Halliwell, Thrunder-bolt. (1) The corn poppy. West.
1886. Britten & Holland, Eng. Plant-n., Thunder Bolts. (1) Lychnis vespertina. Rutl. (2) Papaver Rhœas.… (3) Silene inflata. Kent…, where the children snap the calyxes, which explode with a slight report.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 28 June, 3/1. That strangely beautiful Spanish iris the Thunderbolt, a large flower of browns and yellows and greyish purples.
5. attrib. Thunderbolt bootlo, a species of beetle, Arhopalus fulminans, with dark wing-cases crossed by zigzag grey lines; thunderbolt-stone: see quot., and cf. THUNDERBOLT 3.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., xvi. II. 238. They [Sioux Indians] consider the lightning entering the ground to scatter there in all directions thunderbolt-stones, which are flints, etc.
Hence Thunderbolt v., trans. (a) to strike with or as with a thunderbolt; to astonish, amaze, or terrify; (b) to hurl or dart like a thunderbolt; Thunderbolted ppl. a., struck by a thunderbolt; charged with thunderbolts.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. (1622), 304. Sorrow not being able so quickely to thunderbolt her heart thorough her senses.
1593. G. Harvey, Pierce’s Super., **iv b. He brandisheth the whurlewinde … And thunderbolteth fo-confounding shott.
1623. J. Wodroephe, Marrow Fr. Tongue 487/2. A culpable and indebted Man is alwayes thunder-bolted.
1819. W. Tennant, Papistry Storm’d (1827), 31. It beat the thunder-boltit leven.
1881. in Elworthy, W. Somerset Word-bk., s.v., He (the tower) was thunderbolted about or a sixty year agone.
