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.
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.[1] There is an account of it in The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland by Robert Shiels and Theophilus Cibber:[2]
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.[3] 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.[4]
References
- ^ Dent, Susie (2009), What Made the Crocodile Cry?, Oxford University Press, pp. 47–48, ISBN 9780199574155
- ^ Shiels, Robert; Cibber, Theophilus (1753), The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. Part 4, London: R. Griffiths, p. 234
- ^ Williams, Kipling D.; Bourgeois, Martin J.; Croyle, Robert T. (1993), "The effects of stealing thunder in criminal and civil trials", Law and Human Behavior, Vol 17 (6): 597–609, doi:10.1007/BF01044684
{{citation}}:|volume=has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Coombs, Timothy (2013), Applied Crisis Communication and Crisis Management, SAGE, p. 19, ISBN 9781483321608
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