steal [OE] Steal has two basic senses with the same origin: ‘take dishonestly’ and ‘go secretly’. The source of steal your thunder is surprisingly literal. The English dramatist John Dennis (1657–1734) invented a new method of simulating the sound of thunder as a theatrical sound effect and used it in his unsuccessful play Appius and Virginia. Shortly after he heard the same thunder effects used at a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Dennis was understandably furious. ‘Damn them!’, he fumed, ‘they will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!’ Stealth [ME] is closely connected and originally meant ‘theft’, and the phrase by stealth meant ‘by theft’ in late medieval English. The modern meaning of stealth evolved by homing in on all the furtiveness and secrecy associated with stealing. Stalk [OE] as in ‘to stalk game’ is another relative, originally meaning ‘walk cautiously or stealthily’. The stalk of a plant [ME] is unconnected and may be a form of dialect stale ‘rung of a ladder, long handle’.