Word.ws English Dictionary

thunderclaps

thunderclaps is the plural of thunderclap.

Meaning of thunderclap

Noun

thunderclap (plural thunderclaps)

  1. A sudden, loud thunder caused by a nearby lightning strike; a shock of thunder, as opposed to a reverberating rumble.
    • Thunderclaps that make them quake.1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. (informal) A very loud fart.
  3. (figuratively) Something that makes a big, dramatic impact.
    • A 21-Valyrian steel dagger salute to Paddy Considine, who makes his exit from House Of The Dragon this week with a thunderclap of a performance. “The Lord of the Tides” is the swan song for his King Viserys I Targaryen, a well-intentioned but indecisive man who waited until the very last day of his...2022 October 10, Jenna Scherer, “House Of The Dragon drops its best episode yet”, in AV Club
    Synonyms:
    thunderbolt
  4. Synonym of thunder word.
    • […] the thunderclaps, and advised Cage on their meaning. Cage considered composing new star-map music, in which microphones attached to the throats of the chorus members would make their singing of Joyce's verbal thunderclaps sound like […]2012, Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, page 292
    Synonyms:
    thunder word

See all 5 meanings of thunderclap

Questions about thunderclaps

What is thunderclaps the plural of?
Thunderclaps is the plural of thunderclap.

Words near thunderclaps in the dictionary

  1. thunderclap
  2. thunderclap headache
  3. thunderclap headaches
  4. thunderclapped
  5. thunderclapping
  6. thunderclaps
  7. thundercloud
  8. thunderclouds
  9. thundercrack
  10. thundercracks
  11. thundercrash

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thunderclaps (page history and authors); thunderclap (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: “thunderclaps.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thunderclaps. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.