sheet lightning
- noun
:
relámpago en sheet
- It is late at night; sheet lightning breaks off through the trees, and the throb of cicadas encircles the house.
- a flash of sheet lightning
Examples
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Adam felt it in his nerve ends like the ionizing crackle of sheet lightning.
Fiction book (1991) -
"A vivid flash of sheet lightning turned the sky behind the northern peaks a deathly white and everything else into a hellish rockscape of ebony shadows."
Fiction book (1999) -
The night was humid, and sheet lightning flared in the distance.
Fiction book (1999) -
Far to the north, the dark purple sky was broken by ghostly flashes of sheet lightning.
Fiction book (1995) -
Bad storms—sheet lightning, torrential downpours, tornadoes, landfall hurricanes—always, always, always with the wall trailing.
Fiction book (1995) -
The night was humid, and sheet lightning flared in the distance.
-
Far to the north, the dark purple sky was broken by ghostly flashes of sheet lightning.
-
The night was sultry, with thunder clouds in the sky and an unceasing play of sheet lightning all along the western horizon.
Synonyms
512
1.0
A sudden bright flash in the sky during a storm caused by electricity
1
7.0
Bright flashes in the far sky at night with no nearby thunder, often on hot evenings
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'lightning that appears as a broad, diffuse flash' is directly and transparently built from 'sheet' (a thin, wide layer) + 'lightning' — the compound describes lightning that looks like a sheet. This is a straightforward visual/compositional metaphor following normal noun–noun compounding, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The noun sheet lightning comes from the way distant lightning lights up clouds like a big white sheet: you see a wide, soft flash instead of sharp bolts. So, the phrase refers to lightning that looks like a 'broad, spread-out flash' across the sky.