U.S. slang. [f. THUNDER sb. + -ATION.] Used as a vague expletive or intensive: cf. THUNDER sb. 4.
1833. Elizabeth-City (NC) Star, 18 May, 1/3. Any pray good Mr. Printer, who is this Nelly Fires that’s kicking up such a thundering hul-loo in South Carolina—she must be a rip-roarer, a raal swinge cat, I sorty reckon.—My honey and thunderations!
1844. Maj. J. Jones, Lett. to Henry Clay, 9 Aug., in Brooklyn Star (5 Sept.), 2/1. I’d see ’em testatiously quattlebumbed into everlasting thunderation afore I’d vote for ’em, or any of ther frends.
1856. ‘Mark Twain’ (Snodgrass) in Saturday Post, 14 Nov., in A. B. Paine, Boy’s Life of Mark Twain (1916), 66. When we got to the depo’, I went around to git a look at the iron hoss. Thunderation! It wasn’t no more like a hoss than a meetin’-house.
1887. Century Mag., Nov., 44/2. Everybody wants to know who in thunderation Rache will marry.
1901. Munsey’s Mag., XXIV. 792/2. ‘I like you all to thunderation…,’ he said earnestly, dropping all reserve, ‘but [etc.].’
