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Forked lightning   /fɔrkt lˈaɪtnɪŋ/   Listen
Forked lightning

noun
1.
A form of lightning that moves rapidly in a zigzag path with one end divided (fork-like).  Synonym: chain lightning.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Forked lightning" Quotes from Famous Books



... spear-like Pine. Far above, shot up splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... LIGHTNING.—Forked lightning seen in a zig-zag up the side of the cup shows bad weather conditions; if near the figure of a man or woman, it may possibly indicate death from lightning or electrical mechanism; if seen at the bottom of the cup and ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... wretched Sunday. It rained and blew great guns all day long, and by 6 P.M. the weather culminated in a severe gale, with the glass steadily falling, followed by a heavy thunderstorm, with vivid forked lightning. So furious indeed was the storm, that after passing Duncansby Head, and John o' Groat's House, our captain turned back and ran his vessel into Sinclair Bay, riding at anchor there for the night, not being willing, in ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... which was a considerable establishment back of the dining-room, including a most delectable little creature even smaller than Deenah, but quite as important, and sharing all light and shadow by his side. Deenah had a look of forked lightning and a mellow voice. The more angry he became, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like going to the Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was engaged to another man. Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass through him when he first approached her, and he remained conscious throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it must be owned that his uneasiness was less than it would ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the storm are signs of his contest with the devil. Wherefore the faithful ought not to cross themselves when the thunder peals, lest the evil one should take refuge from the heavenly weapons behind the protecting cross. The Bulgarians say that forked lightning is the lance of Ilya who is chasing the Lamia fiend: summer lightning is due to the sheen of that lance, or to the fire issuing from the nostrils of his celestial steeds. The white clouds of summer ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... wrap yourself up in that cold dripping sheet, I always take cold, only wetting my feet; Yet there is an agent which I would apply, The red forked lightning which ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing storm-clouds suggest his serpent form, his fiery tongue is seen in the forked lightning, and, though he may darken the world for a time, the Sun-god will always be victorious. In Egypt the myth of "the Overthrowing of Apep, the enemy of Ra" presents a close parallel to that of Tiamat;(3) but of all Eastern mythologies that of the Chinese has inspired in art the most ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... act of humility, you knock all the skin off the more vulnerable knee. Emerging from this difficulty, and, perhaps, rising too hastily, a crack on the head closes your eyes, filling them with a vision of forked lightning. Recovering from this agreeable sensation, you find a gap like the edge of a razor, in going through which, you feel the buttons of your waistcoat rubbing against your backbone. It certainly would be no bad half-hour's recreation to watch a rotund Lord Mayor, followed by a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... up in the midst of a terrible thunder-storm—when the East and the West were answering each other with alternate flashes of forked lightning that seemed to split the black clouds with cracks of blinding blue, awful in their blasting silence—followed by great, billowy, shattering rolls of thunder, as loud as if the sky had been a huge kettledrum, on which the clubs of giant drummers were beating a terrible onset; while at sudden ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... how they yawn, the cloudy jaws of heaven, As by a tongue, by forked lightning riven; And to the sky great Indra's fiery bow In lieu of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... small-arms, mingled with shouts of triumph or defiance, burst forth, and the ominous cloud lowering more darkly, seemed peopled by those in deadly strife. An English cheer pealed high above all other sounds; a second followed; the mass was rent asunder, and like the forked lightning from a thunder-cloud, Ramsey rode forth at the head of his battery, the horses bounding madly, while the guns sprang behind them like things of no weight; the gunners leaped to their places, and fighting hand to hand with the French cavalry, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Sought, tearful and wide; Never the red man Came back for his bride; With the forked lightning Now hunts he the deer, Where the Great Spirit Smiles ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... bungalow, was of light varnished wood and the floor was bare. The furniture was of the shabbiest, the simplest. The dressing-table, for instance, was a packing-case in a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the mirror above was very strange; it was as though a little piece of forked lightning was imprisoned in it. On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pincushion, and a special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, and another even more special which she had thought would make a very nice place for ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... the sky was observed by several people between five and six o'clock in the evening of Friday the 12th of this month. It was noticed in the north-west, and appeared as if a ray of forked lightning had been stationary in that quarter of the sky for about fifteen minutes, which was the time it was visible. It was not to be discerned, however, after the sun had ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... directions, save away to the northward, and there the blackness was intense. Not the faintest glimmer of a star was observable through the inky curtain which covered about ten degrees of the horizon in that direction, but now and again a sudden dazzle of wicked-looking forked lightning shot across the face of the bank. As yet, however, there was no sound of thunder, and the same unearthly stillness prevailed, save when a moaning sound could be plainly heard as the puffs of hot wind more and more frequently scurried through ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... at once. All was silent as death, except the thunder and the wind. The cloudy sky appeared as if on fire, each cloud rolling onwards as a sea of flame, and only surpassed in grandeur and brightness by the forked lightning, which constantly seemed to ascend and descend from what was then evidently the town of Bali on fire, only a short distance outside the walls of Koolfu. When this was extinguished a new scene began, if possible, worse than the first. The wind ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish



Words linked to "Forked lightning" :   lightning, chain lightning



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