Stealing thunder

Stealing thunder is to take someone else's idea, using it for one's own advantage or to pre-empt the other party.

The thunder machine in the Auditorium Theatre. The taking of the idea for such a mechanism is the origin of the concept.

Origin

The idiom comes from the peevish dramatist John Dennis early in the 18th century, after he had conceived a novel idea for a thunder machine for his unsuccessful 1709 play Appius and Virginia and later found it used at a performance of Macbeth.[1][2] There is an account of it in The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland by Robert Shiels and Theophilus 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 G—d; the villains will play my thunder, but not my plays.'

Rhetorical use

In a contentious situation, such as a court case, political debate or public relations crisis, it is a tactic used to weaken the force of an adverse point.[5] 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.[6]

gollark: Santa uses Grover's algorithm across a distributed elf system to optimize various computations.
gollark: * N = 1
gollark: Yes, according to Santa-based Santa evaluation.
gollark: He just gives himself very fast computers.
gollark: Santa was accidentally shot down in a minor accidental accident involving a GTech™ rapid bee shipment engine, the US Air Force, and two goats.

References
  1. Dent, Susie (2009), What Made the Crocodile Cry?, Oxford University Press, pp. 47–48, ISBN 9780199574155
  2. Ward, Adolphus William (1899). A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, vol. 3. London: Macmillan. p. 427.
  3. Shiels, Robert; Cibber, Theophilus (1753), The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland, Part 4, London: R. Griffiths, p. 234
  4. Taggart, Caroline, 1954- (2013). As right as rain : the meaning and origins of popular expressions. London. ISBN 978-1-78243-077-3. OCLC 851827079.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. Williams, Kipling D.; Bourgeois, Martin J.; Croyle, Robert T. (1993), "The effects of stealing thunder in criminal and civil trials", Law and Human Behavior, 17 (6): 597–609, doi:10.1007/BF01044684
  6. Coombs, Timothy (2013), Applied Crisis Communication and Crisis Management, SAGE, p. 19, ISBN 9781483321608


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