thunders

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular present of thunder.

   Each evening in July it thunders over the mountains, though the rain rarely reaches town.

   The coach thunders orders at anyone who shows up late to practice.

   Note

   The weather use takes an empty it, like rains and snows: it thunders over the hills. With a real subject it covers anything loud and forceful, from a train that thunders past to a speaker who thunders a warning, with or without an object. The motion use can also be causative, so a driver thunders the truck down the hill.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of thunder.

   Distant thunders rolled across the plains as the storm moved east.

   The editor ignored the thunders of angry readers and printed the story anyway.

   Note

   The plural is a choice rather than a rule, because thunder works both as a mass noun and as a count noun. A storm usually brings plain thunder; the plural suits separate rolling peals, or the threats and denunciations someone hurls, as in a preacher's thunders. The same spelling is the present-tense verb, so the sentence decides which one you are reading.

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