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thunder beast

thunder beast noun: a legendary creature associated with lightning and thunder, as well as the god Raijin, and depicted as various animals.

thunder beast: a legendary creature associated with lightning and thunder, as well as the god Raijin, and depicted...
Image: Nobu Tamura, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

thunder beast (plural thunder beasts)

  1. A legendary creature associated with lightning and thunder, as well as the god Raijin, and depicted as various animals.
    Synonyms:
    raiju

Noun (2)

thunder beast (plural thunder beasts)

  1. A brontothere: any member of the family †Brontotheriidae of extinct odd-toed ungulates, some of which developed bony nose horns and superficially resemble rhinos.
    • One day when Cook was talking with Red Cloud the subject of the thunder beasts came up. Cook was introduced to this mythology, and even shown a petrified jaw bone that was said to have come from the thunder beasts. Of course, this was a brontothere jaw. When Marsh appeared on the scene shortly...2000', Donald R. Prothero, Robert M. Schoch, Horns, Tusks, and Flippers: The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals, page 231

Synonyms of thunder beast

  • raiju

Forms of thunder beast

pluralthunder beasts

Origin of thunder beast

Calque from Japanese 雷獣(らいじゅう) (raijū)

A calque of taxonomic name Brontotheriidae, which is derived from Ancient Greek βροντή (brontḗ, “thunder”) + θηρίον (thēríon, “beast”) + -idae, or else from its probable source, calque of Lakota wakíŋyaŋ, conventionally translated as "thunder beast" when referring to these creatures, though also translated as "thunderer" and literally "the flying one". ]

Questions about thunder beast

What does thunder beast mean?
Thunder beast means a legendary creature associated with lightning and thunder, as well as the god Raijin, and depicted as various animals.
What part of speech is thunder beast?
Thunder beast is a noun.
What is the plural of thunder beast?
The plural of thunder beast is thunder beasts.

Words near thunder beast in the dictionary

  1. thunberginols
  2. thunder
  3. thunder and lightning
  4. Thunder Bay
  5. Thunder Bay District
  6. thunder beast
  7. thunder beasts
  8. thunder box
  9. thunder boxes
  10. thunder clap
  11. thunder claps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thunder beast (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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