Other forms: thunderbolts
A thunderbolt is a flash of lightning, or a shocking piece of news. Struck by a thunderbolt, come like a thunderbolt, hurl thunderbolts.
There is no such physical object: lightning is the flash and thunder the sound, and the bolt is the imagination joining them. It belongs to the gods in myth, and the figurative sense — news arriving like a thunderbolt — is now the commoner.
1nounthunderboltA flash of lightning, or a shocking piece of news.
“A thunderbolt struck the old oak tree and split it down the middle.”
thunderbolt is a flash, or a shock.
Thunder plus bolt, an arrow or missile, from the idea of lightning as a shaft hurled from the sky.
From thunder + bolt.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA