Thunder

How to spell thunder

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thunder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thunder mean?

1. nounThe loud rumbling or crashing sound that follows a flash of lightning during a storm.
2. verbTo make a loud, deep, rumbling noise, or to move or speak with such force.

Thunder in a sentence

• noun

  A clap of thunder rattled the windows as the storm arrived.

• verb

  The clouds began to thunder just before the downpour started.

• noun

  The dog hid under the bed whenever it heard thunder.

• verb

  Trucks thunder past the house all night along the new motorway.

Where does thunder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Thunder descends from the Old English word thunor, which simply named the loud rumbling that follows a flash of lightning. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in the Dutch donder and the German Donner, all tracing back to a root meaning 'to resound' or 'to make a loud noise'. The same ancient root gave the Romans their verb tonare, 'to thunder', and survives in the related English words 'detonate' and 'astound'. The intrusive 'd' between the 'n' and the 'r' crept in over the medieval period for ease of pronunciation, so the spelling came to mirror the way the mouth naturally bridges those sounds. The Norse god of storms, Thor, carries a name from the very same source, and the weekday Thursday literally means Thor's day, a tidy reminder of the word's deep storm-bound history.

How the word is built

• thunder (from Old English thunor: the rumbling sound after lightning)
• no productive affixes; the modern -er ending preserves the older noun form