thunder-stone
(ˈθʌndəstəʊn)
1. = thunderbolt 1. arch.
| 1598 Marston Pigmal. iv, Enuie, let Pines of Ida rest alone, For they will growe spight of thy thunder stone. 1601 Shakes. Jul. C. i. iii. 49, I..Haue bar'd my Bosome to the Thunder-stone. 1678 Dryden & Lee Œdipus iv. i, You merciless powers, Hoard up your thunder-stones. 1819 Shelley Prometh. Unb. iv. 341 Sceptred curse..sending A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones. 1888 Lowell Heartsease & Rue 70 Splintered with thunder-stone. |
2. Applied to various stones, fossils, etc. formerly identified with ‘thunderbolts’, as celts, belemnites, masses of pyrites, meteorites: = thunderbolt 3.
| 1681 Grew Musæum iii. i. i. 258 Thunder-Stone or hard Button-Stone. Brontias. So called, for that people think they fall sometimes with Thunder. 1703 Maundrell Journ. Jerus. (1721) 52 Each tube had a small cavity in its Center, from which its parts were projected in form of rays, to the circumference, after the manner of the Stones vulgarly call'd Thunder-stones. c 1710 C. Fiennes Diary (1888) 218 Ye oare as its just dug Lookes like ye thunderstone. 1778 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 2) II. 1090/1 Belemnites, vulgarly called thunder-bolts or thunder-stones. 1796 Morse Amer. Geog. II. 16 Norway produces..amethysts, agates, thunder-stones, and eagle-stones. 1802 Howard in Phil. Trans. XCII. 169 Because explosion and report have generally accompanied the descent of [meteorolites], the name of thunderbolt, or thunderstone, has ignorantly attached itself to them. 1907 Q. Rev. July 176 The ‘thunderstones’ were of human workmanship. |
3. poet. Applied to a (? stone) cannon-ball.
| 1821 Shelley Hellas 370 The..allies Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. |