Well, going look back to "thunderous" words and expressions. So words that go back to the idea of thunder, which is, of course, a very dramatic metaphor, so it's not surprising it's so productive in English. Where we're astonished, for example, we are literally "thunderstruck", cos the word "astonished" comes from the Latin "ex", meaning "out", and "tonare", which is "to thunder". And when "astonished" was first used, many centuries ago, it described someone who was stunned, as if by a blow, almost in a trance, and it could be a good thing as well as a bad one. And in the Swedish - I've always loved this - the word for thunder, fogive my accent, is "tordon", and that literally means "Thor's din", because he's making such a noise in the sky. And Thursday, of course, is literally "Thor's day", dedicated to the Viking god. But I'll end with one of my favourite origins, and regular viewers will probably remember this one. "To steal someone's thunder" goes back to a very unsuccesful playwright called John Dennis who, in 1704, put on a play, had a very short run, it was his own play that he'd written. And he was still good enough to go and see the performance, if you like, that replaced him, and that was Macbeth. He saw a production company. He sat in the audience and then he saw that the thunder-making machine that he himself had invented for his own play, which was, a sort of, metal dish, or a wooden dish, with metal bolls rolling around, had been pinched by this company and was been used by them. Allegedly, he stood up in the audience and said, "Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they still my thunder". So really literal origin for "stealing someone's thunder", which I love.
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