"thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th century

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/22/2010 01:12 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I'd have thought that "thunderstone" applied more specifically - though not
>necessarily exclusively - to meteorites or presumed meteorites.  Their
>existence was roundly doubted and denied in the 18th C.

The OED thinks not exclusively, but less archaically, to meteorites:

   1. = THUNDERBOLT 1. arch., with 5 quotations from 1598 through 1888;

   2. Applied to various stones, fossils, etc. formerly identified
with 'thunderbolts', as celts, belemnites, masses of pyrites,
meteorites: = THUNDERBOLT 3, with 7 quotations through perhaps the
last examination in 1907.

Hawthorne wrote of the mid-1700s:  "By the number of such accidents
on record, we might suppose that the thunder-stone, as they termed
it, fell oftener and deadlier on steeples, dwellings, and unsheltered
wretches."  He surely is equating "thunder-stone" to lightning, not
to meteorites (which fall to earth rarely) or other types of stones.

My first citation below is sense 1, I believe, with its association
with lightning.  My second appears to deny any such
association.  There seems to have been confusion in the 18th century
-- were thunderstones something that fell as a result of thunder and
lightning, or part of the lightning itself?

Who knew?  (Besides Ben and some forgotten Frenchmen.)
Joel


>JL
>
>On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      "thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th century
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > My further research for "thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th
> > century, for my Hawthorne project, turned up a scattering in
> > ECCO.  (The OED has no citations for this sense between 1678 and
> > 1819, even I think Jesse told me in its database.)  Two of these
> > seemed especially interesting:
> >
> > 1)  The New Book of Knowledge.  Shewing The Effects of the Planets
> > [etc. etc.].  London: printed for A. Wilde, 1758.  Page 101.
> >
> > "Of Thunder-bolts or Thunder-stones."  [Section title.]
> >
> > "Thunder-bolts and Thunder-stones are nothing else but the soeculent
> > Matter of those Vapours and Exhalations, which are the material Cause
> > of the Thunder and Lightning, for we see by Experience, that even our
> > Urine has always some such concreted Dregs belonging to it; and
> > sometimes pefrect [sic] Stones made out of it, either in the Reins or
> > Uterers [sic] or Bladder; and why there may not be a Petrifaction in
> > this Case, I know no reason."
> >
> > (The author of this "new book of knowledge" seems a bit out of touch
> > -- Franklin's and the French experiments were in 1752.)
> >
> > 2)  The History and Philosophy of Earthquakes, from the Remotest to
> > the Present Times [etc.]. By a Member of the Royal Academy of
> > Berlin.  London: Printed for J. Nourse, 1757.  ESTC attributes this
> > to John Bevis, saying "A member of the Royal Academy = John Bevis."
> >
> > Page 189.
> >
> > "As to the thunder stones which the vulgar believes [sic] always to
> > accompany lightning, their existence may in my opinion well be
> > questioned, and I verily believe there never was an instance of any
> > such thing: it is not however absolutely impossible, that by a rapid
> > ascent of an hurricane to the clouds there may sometimes be carried
> > up with it some stones or mineral substances [or Kansan houses],
> > which being softened and melted together by heat, may form what is
> > called a thunder stone: but such stones are not found in places where
> > it thunders; and if any such should be found, it would be more
> > reasonable to believe that it arose from a mineral substance melted
> > and formed by the inflamed sulphur of thunder in the earth itself,
> > than to imagine that it was formed in the air or the clouds, and
> > projected downwards with the thunder."
> >
> > (German -- or Berlin-sanctioned -- science was better -- or perhaps
> > only more wordy -- even in those days. Although this author too is
> > post-Franklin,.  And I am skeptical about "the inflamed sulphur of
> > thunder in the earth itself":  did he still think the flash of
> > lightning was sulphur burning?)
> >
> > Joel
> >
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