[steel] 
,verb, stole, sto⋅len, steal⋅ing, noun | 1. | to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. |
| 2. | to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. |
| 3. | to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend. |
| 4. | to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually fol. by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child. |
| 5. | Baseball. (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch. |
| 6. | Games. to gain (a point, advantage, etc.) by strategy, chance, or luck. |
| 7. | to gain or seize more than one's share of attention in, as by giving a superior performance: The comedian stole the show. |
| 8. | to commit or practice theft. |
| 9. | to move, go, or come secretly, quietly, or unobserved: She stole out of the house at midnight. |
| 10. | to pass, happen, etc., imperceptibly, gently, or gradually: The years steal by. |
| 11. | Baseball. (of a base runner) to advance a base without the help of a walk or batted ball. |
| 12. | Informal. an act of stealing; theft. |
| 13. | Informal. the thing stolen; booty. |
| 14. | Informal. something acquired at a cost far below its real value; bargain: This dress is a steal at $40. |
| 15. | Baseball. the act of advancing a base by stealing. |
| 16. | steal someone's thunder, to appropriate or use another's idea, plan, words, etc. |
[thuhn-der] | 1. | a loud, explosive, resounding noise produced by the explosive expansion of air heated by a lightning discharge. |
| 2. | any loud, resounding noise: the thunder of applause. |
| 3. | a threatening or startling utterance, denunciation, or the like. |
| 4. | to give forth thunder (often used impersonally with it as the subject): It thundered last night. |
| 5. | to make a loud, resounding noise like thunder: The artillery thundered in the hills. |
| 6. | to utter loud or vehement denunciations, threats, or the like. |
| 7. | to speak in a very loud tone. |
| 8. | to move or go with a loud noise or violent action: The train thundered through the village. |
| 9. | to strike, drive, inflict, give forth, etc., with loud noise or violent action. |
| 10. | steal someone's thunder,
|
To upstage someone; to destroy the effect of what someone does or says by doing or saying the same thing first: “The Republicans stole the Democrats' thunder by including the most popular provisions of the Democratic proposal in their own bill.”
The noise created when air rushes back into a region from which it has been expelled by the passage of lightning.
steal (stēl)
n.
The diversion of blood flow from its normal course.
| thunder (thŭn'dər) Pronunciation Key
The explosive noise that accompanies a stroke of lightning. Thunder is a series of sound waves produced by the rapid expansion of the air through which the lightning passes. Sound travels about 1 km in 3 seconds (about 1 mi in 5 seconds). The distance between an observer and a lightning flash can be calculated by counting the number of seconds between the flash and the thunder. See Note at lightning. |
steal someone's thunder
Use or appropriate another's idea, especially to one's advantage, as in It was Harold's idea but they stole his thunder and turned it into a massive advertising campaign without giving him credit. This idiom comes from an actual incident in which playwright and critic John Dennis (1657-1734) devised a "thunder machine" (by rattling a sheet of tin backstage) for his play, Appius and Virginia (1709), and a few days later discovered the same device being used in a performance of Macbeth, whereupon he declared, "They steal my thunder."