THUNDERBOLT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does thunderbolt mean? 

• THUNDERBOLT (noun)
  The noun THUNDERBOLT has 2 senses:

1. a discharge of lightning accompanied by thunder

2. a shocking surprise

  Familiarity information: THUNDERBOLT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• THUNDERBOLT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A discharge of lightning accompanied by thunder

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

bolt; bolt of lightning; thunderbolt

Hypernyms ("thunderbolt" is a kind of...):

lightning (abrupt electric discharge from cloud to cloud or from cloud to earth accompanied by the emission of light)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A shocking surprise

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

bombshell; thunderbolt; thunderclap

Context example:

news of the attack came like a bombshell

Hypernyms ("thunderbolt" is a kind of...):

surprise (a sudden unexpected event)

 Context examples 

To know that Marianne was in town was—in the same language—a thunderbolt.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf Larsen was saying.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said ““Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At the same time, Uranus, planet of all things unexpected, was positioned 180-degrees from in your fifth house of love, and sending his electric thunderbolts directly to the tender full moon and mighty Sun.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

It was like a thunderbolt.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

White Fang, in the very nature of him, could never know anything about gods; at the best he could know only things that were beyond knowing—but the wonder and awe that he had of these man-animals in ways resembled what would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestial creature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand at an astonished world.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Involuntarily he glanced up and around to see if there were any trace of those opportune levin-flashes and thunderbolts which, in the Acta Sanctorum, were wont so often to cut short the loose talk of the scoffer.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thunderbolts and daggers!—what a reproof would she have given me!—her taste, her opinions—I believe they are better known to me than my own,—and I am sure they are dearer.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

You have come through a potentially difficult new moon in Scorpio at the end of October when Uranus in Taurus at four degrees aimed his thunderbolts directly at the tender moon and Sun in Scorpio, also at four degrees.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)