Word.ws English Dictionary

chain lightning

chain lightning noun: lightning in angular, zigzag, or forked flashes.

Noun

chain lightning (uncountable)

  1. (Canada, US) Lightning in angular, zigzag, or forked flashes.
    • smart as chain lightning (sharp-witted)
    • faster than a cat lapping chain lightning
  2. (US, attributive, especially) (A person or thing that is) very fast and dynamic.
    • Hettie was chain lightning with a six-shooter.
    • It was too late in the day; I would find that compared to a trout a bonefish was chain lightning; I wouldn’t see a bonefish; I would not get one if I did.1921, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter 7, in The Out Trail, page 227
  3. (US, obsolete, slang) A high-proof whiskey or other spirit that has not been allowed to mature; a poor-quality or adulterated spirit.
    • Give me a meetin where nobody cares a snap of a finger for nobody in particular, and has no interest but in a good feed, a good song, a good smoke, and chain-lightning to top it all off with.1860, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, “The Old and the New Year”, in The Season-Ticket, page 306
    • Grandma said no more, but brought a bottle from the closet, and began to rub the spots with chain lightning. To Prudy’s joy and surprise, the dress was soon as clean as ever.1874, Rebecca Sophia Clarke, chapter 9, in Miss Thistledown, page 130

chain lightning meaning in Tamil

chain lightning in Tamil

தொடர் மின்னல்

Examples of chain lightning in a sentence

  • It looked like a colossal railroad map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight sky.1872, Mark Twain, chapter 74, in Roughing It, page 534:
  • The birch trees are bare and white as chain lightning against the sky.1985, W. P. Kinsella, “Vows”, in The Moccasin Telegraph and Other Stories, page 129:
  • The only person who would buy this “chain lightning” was the Kaffir, but the Kaffir was forbidden by law to purchase liquor of any sort.1901, Elizabeth Charlotte Briggs, chapter 29, in The Staff Work of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1901, page 331:
  • He only laughed and said that chain lightning, as he called it, was the best stuff in the world.1985, John Hawkes, Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade, page 147:

Synonyms of chain lightning

All synonyms of chain lightning

Questions about chain lightning

What does chain lightning mean?
Chain lightning means lightning in angular, zigzag, or forked flashes.
What is chain lightning in Tamil?
Chain lightning in Tamil is தொடர் மின்னல். See Chain lightning meaning in Tamil.
How do you use chain lightning in a sentence?
It looked like a colossal railroad map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight sky.
What part of speech is chain lightning?
Chain lightning is a noun.

Words near chain lightning in the dictionary

  1. chain hobbles
  2. chain latch
  3. chain latches
  4. chain letter
  5. chain letters
  6. chain lightning
  7. chain locker
  8. chain lockers
  9. chain mail
  10. chain mails
  11. chain map

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chain lightning (page history and authors); chain lightning (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chain lightning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chain_lightning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.