thunderbolt

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A discharge of lightning accompanied by thunder.
2. n. A flash of lightning conceived as a bolt or dart hurled from the heavens.
3. n. One that acts with sudden and destructive fury.
4. n. A startling, forceful action: "Every political campaign manager saves a thunderbolt for the last week before Election Day” ( Art Buchwald).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A flash of lightning with the accompanying crash of thunder: so called because regarded as due to the hurling of a bolt or shaft at the object struck by the lightning. See def. 2.
2. n. The imaginary bolt or shaft (often regarded as a stone) conceived as the material agent or substance of a flash of lightning, and the cause of the accompanying crash of thunder: an attribute of Zeus or Jupiter as the god of thunder (Jupiter Tonans); specifically, in heraldry, a bearing representing a thunderbolt more or less like that of Jupiter. It is often composed of barbed lances, the shafts of which are broken into dovetails, and a group of these put side by side, having a pair of wings attached, is emblematic of radiating light; sometimes it is a doubleflame of fire pointing up and down and accompanied with lances, radiating blades, etc.
3. n. A stone or other hard concretion of distinctive shape, usually tapering or spear-like, found in the ground, and supposed in popular superstition to have been the material substance of a thunderbolt (in sense 2), and to have fallen from heaven with the lightning. Specifically— One of various polished stone implements, celts, and the like, found in the ground, supposed to have fallen from the sky. Also called thunder-ax, thunder-hammer, thunder-stone, ceraunia, and storm-stone.
4. n. Figuratively, one who is daring or irresistible; one who acts with fury or with sudden and resistless force.
5. n. A dreadful threat, denunciation, censure, or the like, proceeding from some high authority; a fulmination.
6. n. plural The white campion (Lychnis vespertina), the corn-poppy (Papaver Rhœas), or the bladder-campion (Silene Cucubalus)—the last so named from the slight report made by exploding the inflated calyx.
7. To strike with or as with lightning.

Wiktionary

1. n. A flash of lightning accompanied by a crash of thunder.
2. n. figuratively An event that is terrible, horrific or unexpected.
3. n. soccer A very powerful shot.
4. n. paleontology A belemnite, or thunderstone.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A shaft of lightning; a brilliant stream of electricity passing from one part of the heavens to another, or from the clouds to the earth.
2. n. Something resembling lightning in suddenness and effectiveness.
3. n. Vehement threatening or censure; especially, ecclesiastical denunciation; fulmination.
4. n. (Paleon.) A belemnite, or thunderstone.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a shocking surprise
2. n. a discharge of lightning accompanied by thunder