lightnings

1. 1
   nounarchaic

   Plural of lightning.

   Pale lightnings flickered above the mountains long after the thunder had died away.

   You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames Into her scornful eyes!

   c. 1603, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”

   Note

   This plural counts every flash as a separate thing, whereas modern English usually treats lightning as uncountable and speaks of flashes or bolts of lightning instead. Lightnings belongs to older verse and fiction: Shakespeare's King Lear calls on "nimble lightnings" to dart into scornful eyes, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein watches "pallid lightnings" play above Mont Blanc. In new writing it sounds deliberately old-fashioned.

2. 2
   verbnonstandard

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of lightning.

   "Look, it lightnings again!" the toddler shouted, pressing her face to the window.

   "When it lightnings, we have to get out of the pool," the kids reminded each other.

   Note

   A child's verb, made straight from the noun and used only with an empty it as its subject: it lightnings, the way it rains or it snows. Adult speech treats it as nonstandard and says there is lightning or the lightning flashes instead. The same spelling also serves as the old plural for separate flashes, so only the grammar of the sentence tells them apart.

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