[f. THUNDER v. + -ER1.] One who or that which thunders.
1. He who thunders or causes thunder: applied to God, or to a deity, as Jupiter or Thor.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., IV. met. vi. 111 (Camb. MS.). The lawes of the heye thonderere, þat is to seyn of god.
1552. Huloet, Thundrer, altitonans, tis, a name that the panyms gaue to God.
1611. Shaks., Cymb., V. iv. 95. Iupiter.… How dare you Ghostes Accuse the Thunderer?
1791. Cowper, Iliad, I. 492. Once the Gods … Conspired to bind the Thund’rer.
1870. Bryant, Iliad, I. I. 23. Make my suit to Jupiter The Thunderer.
b. A person employed at a dramatic representation to imitate thunder by some mechanical means.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 235, ¶ 2. Others will have it to be the Play-house Thunderer.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 270. It will be a further gratification to the patriotic audience to know that the present thunderer is a fellow-countryman.
2. fig. A resistless warrior; a powerful declaimer or orator, an utterer of violent invective, or the like; spec. as a sobriquet of the London Times newspaper.
1586. T. B., La Primaud. Fr. Acad. (1589), 615. Who will not wish to have the surname of Aristides the just … rather than as many use to be called Conquerors, Besiegers, Thunderers?
1784. Cowper, Task, II. 221. To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire Upon thy foes, was never meant my task: But I can feel thy fortunes … with as true a heart As any thund’rer there.
1840. Carlyle, Lett., 13 June, in C. & Lond. Libr. (1907), 58. Six and sixpence—for a Times advertisement, which the Thunderer dunned me for to-day!
1882. Pebody, Eng. Journalism, xv. 114. It was the writing of Edward Sterling that gave the Times the name of the ‘Thunderer.’
1884. W. M. Dickson, in Harper’s Mag., June, 64/1. He [Stephen Douglas] re-appeared in the arena, again the thunderer of the scene.
3. Something that makes a noise like thunder; spec. a toy made of a flat thin piece of wood or an ox-rib with a string attached at one end, which makes a roaring noise when whirled round; a ‘bull-roarer.’
1860. Tyndall, Glac., II. XXV. 364. A new [shaft] is hollowed out, in which … the cataract plays the thunderer.
1908. [Miss E. Fowler], Between Trent & Ancholme, 81. ‘Thunderers,’ a bricklayer’s thin lath, etc.
