Definition
nounThe loud rumbling, cracking, or crashing sound caused by expansion of rapidly heated air around a lightning bolt.
nounA deep, rumbling noise resembling thunder.
Sentence Examples
We took cover from the thunder shower.
I heard it thunder in the distance.
The flash of lightning precedes the sound of thunder.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English thunder, thonder, thundre, thonre, thunnere, þunre, from Old English þunor (“thunder”), from Proto-West Germanic *þunr, from Proto-Germanic *þunraz, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ten-, *(s)tenh₂- (“to thunder”).
Compare astound, astonish, stun. Germanic cognates include West Frisian tonger, Dutch donder, German Donner, Old Norse Þórr (English Thor), Danish torden, Norwegian Nynorsk tore. Other cognates include Persian تندر (tondar), Latin tonō, detonō, Ancient Greek στένω (sténō), στενάζω (stenázō), στόνος (stónos), Στέντωρ (Sténtōr), Irish torann, Welsh taran, Gaulish Taranis. Doublet of donner, Thunor, and Thor.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"With each clap of thunder echoing from one high building to another the noise was terrific."
— 1953 July, Allen Rowley, “First Impressions of American Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 493:
"The thunders of the Vatican could no longer strike into the heart of princes."
— 1847, William H. Prescott, A History of the Conquest of Peru:
"The revenging gods / 'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend."
— c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
"Adam's fall and Vico's thunder are embodied in a word of a hundred letters, the first of ten thunders in the Wake."
— 1996, William York Tindall, A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake, page 31:
"The farmer whose land the Pratincole had chosen to frequent had such an adversion to birders that he had been thundering up and down all day in a high-powered muck-spreader, splattering them with cow dung!"
— 1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 59: