Word.ws English Dictionary

thunderstick

thunderstick noun: a gun or cannon, especially a rifle, as seen from the imagined perspective of an uncivilized person or an animal.

thunderstick: a gun or cannon, especially a rifle, as seen from the imagined perspective of an uncivilized person...
Image: Charleville Arsenal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

thunderstick (plural thundersticks)

  1. A gun or cannon, especially a rifle, as seen from the imagined perspective of an uncivilized person or an animal.
    • The man pointed his thunderstick at the buffalo, and with a great noise and fire, the buffalo fell down dead.
    • We sneaked into the soldiers' camp, and stole five thundersticks.
    Synonyms:
    fire-stick
  2. A narrow plastic balloon that is used as a promotional noise maker by hitting one against another.
    • Called “James Tenney and Milton Babbitt : American Iconoclasts,” the mini-festival begins on Saturday with a work by Mr. Tenney, who died in 2006, on a program including pieces by Larry Polansky, Michael Byron and Henry Cowell (the 1925 “Ensemble” for string quartet and thundersticks). Mr. Babbitt...2008 February 8, The New York Times, “Classical Music/Opera Listings”, in New York Times

Examples of thunderstick in a sentence

  • Two men with beards... carrying thundersticks... were in the village above...1931 He Dog, interviewed by Mari Sandoz (John Colhoff, interpreter), in The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire (University of Nebraska Press...
  • (Two bears discussing a rifle found lying on the ground): Thunderstick? ...You actually said 'Thunderstick?'...1985, Gary Larson, Bride of the Far Side:
  • Tenney, who died in 2006, on a program including pieces by Larry Polansky, Michael Byron and Henry Cowell (the 1925 “Ensemble” for string quartet and thundersticks).2008 February 8, The New York Times, “Classical Music/Opera Listings”, in New York Times:

Synonyms of thunderstick

Forms of thunderstick

pluralthundersticks
alternative formthunder-stick
alternative formthunder stick

Origin of thunderstick

From thunder + stick. Originally used by or ascribed to members of non-European cultures or anthropomorphized animals describing firearms.

Questions about thunderstick

What does thunderstick mean?
Thunderstick means a gun or cannon, especially a rifle, as seen from the imagined perspective of an uncivilized person or an animal.
How do you use thunderstick in a sentence?
Two men with beards... carrying thundersticks... were in the village above...
What part of speech is thunderstick?
Thunderstick is a noun.
What is the plural of thunderstick?
The plural of thunderstick is thundersticks.

Words near thunderstick in the dictionary

  1. thundersnow
  2. thundersnows
  3. thundersome
  4. thundersquall
  5. thundersqualls
  6. thunderstick
  7. thundersticks
  8. thunderstone
  9. thunderstones
  10. thunderstorm
  11. thunderstorm asthma

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thunderstick (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: “thunderstick.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thunderstick. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.