Stealing thunder is to use someone else's idea for one's own advantage, or to pre-empt them.
The idiom comes from the dramatistJohn Dennis early in the 18th century, after he had conceived a novel idea for athunder machine for his unsuccessful 1709 playAppius and Virginia and later found it used at a performance ofMacbeth.[1][2] There is an account of the incident inThe Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland byRobert Shiels andTheophilus Cibber:[3][4]
Mr Dennis happened once to go to the play, when a tragedy was acted, in which the machinery of thunder was introduced, a new artificial method of producing which he had formerly communicated to the managers. Incensed by this circumstance, he cried out in a transport of resentment, "That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my plays."
A more accepted version, written by William Shepard Walsh who quotedJoseph Spence, is that the saying came after a performance ofMacbeth:
“Damn them!” he cried, rising in a violent passion, “they will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!”"[5]
Etymologists have theorized that the phrase may have connected to the stealing of thunder from the Roman god,Jupiter, and that the usage of the saying was common in theater settings before the Dennis attribution. The first noted use of the phrase outside of the theater, in print form and used in the known sense, was traced back to the early 19th century.[5]
In a contentious situation, such as a court case, a political debate or a public relations crisis, it is a tactic used to weaken the force of an adverse point.[6] By introducing the point first and being open about it or rebutting it, the force of the opposition's argument is diminished – their thunder is stolen.[7]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) | Thisvocabulary-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |
 | This theatre-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |