thunderbolt
Americannoun
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thunderbolts
plural
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a flash of lightning with the accompanying thunder.
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an imaginary bolt or dart conceived as the material destructive agent cast to earth in a flash of lightning.
the thunderbolts of Jove.
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something very destructive, terrible, severe, sudden, or startling.
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a person who acts with fury or with sudden and irresistible force.
noun
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a flash of lightning accompanying thunder
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the imagined agency of destruction produced by a flash of lightning
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(in mythology) the destructive weapon wielded by several gods, esp the Greek god Zeus See also Thor
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something very startling
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of thunderbolt
First recorded in 1400–50, thunderbolt is from late Middle English thondre bolte. See thunder, bolt 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Ermedin Demirovic unleashed a thunderbolt in the 90th minute to send Stuttgart into the top four with a 1-0 home win over Freiburg in the Bundesliga on Sunday.
From Barron's ● Feb. 1, 2026
The attack fell like a thunderbolt on the country’s tightly knit Jewish community.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025
That’s why the revision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of its advisory on vaccines and autism struck like a thunderbolt, and not in a good way.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2025
The higher-for-longer inflation predicament has hit the U.S. housing market like a thunderbolt.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2024
Mark slipped out the window several inches—a thunderbolt of pure terror flashed through him like an electric shock before his progress stopped again.
From "The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Book Four; Origin)" by James Dashner
True to his word, he was best when fresh, slipping straight back into bowling thunderbolts.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2025
James Baldwin wrote thunderbolts of truth about American racism that changed the way people have understood and debated the issue since.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2024
Some of them resemble branching snowflakes, thunderbolts or neurons, whispering the unique expression of the artist's vision.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 3, 2024
"I think Diana ... will be hurling thunderbolts on coronation day, that's for sure," royal author Tina Brown told Reuters.
From Reuters ● May 6, 2023
But Chen wanted to incur thunderbolts during drought.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
