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]

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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