thunderstroke
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of thunderstroke
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.
"It is one of the mysteries of nature," he said in 1906, after his favorite daughter Susy died of meningitis at 24, "that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live."
From Time Magazine Archive
To her hearer the final phrase was like a thunderstroke.
From Demos by Gissing, George
The world seems to be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate.
From The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days Scenes In The Great War by Caine, Hall, Sir
Elijah thought, that, if Jackson had not been killed by his own men after delivering that thunderstroke, Hooker would have been annihilated.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 99, January, 1866 by Various
My father was then in the zenith of his prosperity, and was absorbed in his affairs; yet this loss—this heavy blow—came upon him like a thunderstroke.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various
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.
