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When we talk about lightning and thunder, we generally use the words like this:

  1. It's lightning
  2. It's thundering
  3. The antenna was hit by lightning

But sometimes we use thunder in the past tense...

  1. It thundered twice before lightning hit the tower.
  2. It rained heavily yesterday and thundered so severely.

Now, how do we use the word lightning in the past tense like the word thunder? Does the verb 'lightning' have a past tense?

Ooker
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itsols
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  • How could you check? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 06 '14 at 01:20
  • @EdwinAshworth my Oxford doesn't have it. Perhaps someone has access to a larger dictionary or lexicon. – itsols Nov 06 '14 at 02:05
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    Dictionary.com has lightninged. Not sure how far to trust it. However, the word is almost never used. Also, since lightning comes from lightening, the "proper" past would be lightened, but that is certainly an obsolete usage. – Amadan Nov 06 '14 at 02:18
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    yes, many sources don't even list "lightning" as a verb, and I never ever hear that, nor have heard it. Interesting though that the example you provide in present progressive is "It's lightning," which could, I suppose, not be a present progressive at all but rather answer the question "What is it?" But you're asking about the verb, and when you say "we generally say", I'm assuming the "generally" refers in some way to frequency; and though I may misunderstand what you mean by "we", but if that includes me, then I'd have to say you're wrong: we don't generally say "It's lightning." – Rusty Tuba Nov 06 '14 at 02:26
  • Related: What is the correct present continuous form of “thunder” and “lightning”? – choster Nov 06 '14 at 02:32
  • Correct? Perhaps: "is lightninging," but really, the market will not (does not, according to concordances and Google Ngram) bear it. – Rusty Tuba Nov 06 '14 at 03:28
  • You have access to what are almost certainly larger dictionaries. At TheFreeDictionary, both AHDEL and RHKWebster's list the -ed form as 'lightninged' and an invariant -ing form. guifa confirms that OED also licenses these verb forms. The fact that Collins does not list them indicates that their use may be rare, especially in the UK. Roaring Fish suggests a less strange-sounding (to my British ears) alternative to 'lightninged' in 'lightened' (though some would argue that's not what you asked for). – Edwin Ashworth Nov 06 '14 at 14:39
  • @Amadan Frequency of use, not etymology, is taken as the standard of acceptability ('properness'). – Edwin Ashworth Nov 06 '14 at 14:43
  • @EdwinAshworth: I agree, which was the reason for the scare quotes. However, I was not too off the mark, as the disparity between the answers rather clearly shows. – Amadan Nov 07 '14 at 00:51
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    @EdwinAshworth probably the best universal solution is to use "There was lightning", because I'd imagine most people in my area would misunderstand "last night it lightened" as perhaps missing the word "up" and refering to the wind or rain not being as intense. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 04:13
  • "There was lightning and it thundered." If you see a verb form of lightning in use (lightninging, lightninged ), 1. suspect if it is a gerund (noun) per context 2. Else accept it for its contextual meaning. However, always avoid using the word as a noun. This I believe is the idea behind current editions of some standard dictionaries not including lightning as a verb (any more). – Kris Nov 07 '14 at 05:16
  • @guifa Universal solutions in English!? We'd have nothing to argue about. I mean discuss. Over here, the PP version 'It was thundering and lightning last night' is quite often used, as is the gerund (though 'lightning' is probably deverbal here) version 'There was thundering and lightning'. The coupling disambiguates; 'It was lightning' (PP version) is very rare, though 'Was that lightning?' is used. One just has to be aware of local (-lish) practice. When in the US, walk on the sidewalk (and drive on the right). – Edwin Ashworth Nov 07 '14 at 08:48
  • @EdwinAshworth haha, true. I more meant, since no one contests or would confuse the noun lightning on either side of the pond, I should have called it the "least potentially ambiguous and/or contestable" form ;) – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 08:56
  • We seem to use Lightninging and lightninged, but the pronunciation is a bit odd - light nee ying?! and light nind. The "t" is nearly not there. – Phil Sweet Jun 26 '16 at 05:42

4 Answers4

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OED lists lightning as a verb and includes the past tense form lightninged:

Lightning, v.: = lighten v.2 6. Also fig

1903 Westm. Gaz. 16 Nov. 8/2 The two metal balls..thundered and lightninged as they delivered the message.

1926 H. Caine in Strand Mag. Jan. 20/1 Mr. Gladstone leapt to his feet, whereupon the air of the House thundered and lightninged for a short ten minutes.

1935 Z. N. Hurston Mules & Men i. i. 27 You know, when it lightnings, de angels is peepin' in de lookin' glass.

This is not some mere quotation from the entry of lighten, as you can see, it's listed explicitly as a separate entry, separate from the noun form, with a single sense. Here's it's entry profile: enter image description here

Contrary to people saying this is not a common form or inadvisable, I'm a native speaker, I use it, and can confirm that everyone around me (I'm in the US South) uses it. To me, lightened only has an inchoative meaning (that is, to become lighter) and I would never use it to refer to the electrical discharge and likely not understand it as such barring other context clues. Notice that the original citations are from England (although Edwin says it's unused in Britain these days), and the OED doesn't list it as being obsolete, literary, dialectal, rare. Curiously, for most (myself included), the present participle is invariable, although given that Urban Dictionary has several entries for it, it's possible someone uses it somewhere. Personally, if I did, since I normally pronounce -ing as [n̩], there'd be little perceptible difference between [lɑ̝ʔ.nə̆n] and [lɑ̝ʔ.nə̆n.n̩].

While I admit it may be more frequent in my dialect, it's certainly used in higher, academic registers. For example, looking at the linguistics article "What Rains?" (Bill J. Darden, Linguistic Inquiry 4.4 [1973]), the verb is used in line with other verbs in a linguistics article about a completely different topic:

Even in English there are problems that for the presumption that every sentence has a subject. In sentences such as (1), the it seems to have neither of the normal functions of pronouns:
(1) It rained (snowed, thundered, lightninged).
It is not deitic, nor does it refer to an entity named by another noun phrase.

Likewise, in another article, "Grammar and Existence: A Preface to Ontology" (from Mind, 1960, Oxford UP) we can find:

That it has just lightninged (causally) implies that it will shortly thunder. (p. 519)

In fact, you can even find a compounded past participle form of it in Judith Witt's review of two books in Modern Philology 90.2 (1992):

“A kiss is just a kiss, even when it is a great kiss,” cautions Susan Morgan of the white-lightninged climax of James's Portrait of a Lady (1881). (p. 285)

Even more recently, it was used in "June Twelfth" (Anatoly Naiman, American Poetry Review 34.4 [2005]:

Yesterday was sunny and warm, then a storm struck, It thundered and lightninged, it poured, and then the sun came out again. (p. 39)

And also a figurative use from 1992 ("Gardening, The Professor", Jill P. Baumgaertner, The Centennial Review 36.3 [1992])

… These lumpy legs / he hangs from trellises next to the pond / lightninged with the fish

And a present simple usage since people still don't think the verb exists separately, from "Naturalism and Process" (Hegeler Institute, The Monist 64.1 [1981]):

  1. We now need to note the existence in the manifest framework of verbs which take dummy subjects.
    • It rains
    • It thunders
    • It lightnings (p. 47)

According to Google N-Grams, lightning is the prefered verb in the phrase thunder and [lighten|lightning], though both clearly exist and are used.

Given that others seem to refute the existance of lightning[s|ed] as a verb even in spite of the clear evidence to the contrary, if you wish to use a past tense construction, your best bet is going to be to say that there was lightning avoiding the verbs entirely or use it was lightning which (I think) is acceptable spelling on both sides of the Atlantic. Besides, these days, it seems for the past few decades, most people use the "there was lightning" structure a lot more than any other form combined.

user0721090601
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    Shouldn't one contrast the results for 'thundered and lightninged'/'thundered and lightened'? {Google Ngrams} This shows the latter as 5x as common as the former. Even this really surprises me; obviously I'm being too parochial. My apologies to the the South. Only the latter seems to be used here in the UK; the other flatlines. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 06 '14 at 14:37
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    Presumably, for most people lightning is either an irregular verb or a defective verb. Putting it more simply, I don't imagine very many people would say "lightninging". – Peter Shor Nov 06 '14 at 14:38
  • Your ngram isn't objective. The question is not about the nouns. By adding "thunders and lightnings" you distort the outcome. Well, never trust a statistic you didn't make yourself. – Em1 Nov 06 '14 at 15:07
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    @Em1 Those are both generally uncountable in modern English. Plural forms in that ngram ought to be negligible. In any case, it should be clear that lightning is a legitimately used verb, with lightninged as its past tense. – user0721090601 Nov 06 '14 at 15:18
  • @guifa ~ I just checked the OED. It has no entry for lightning as a verb, and does not list lightninged as a past form. Here is the link proving it: -> http://ezproxy.bcu.ac.uk:2333/search?searchType=dictionary&q=lightening&_searchBtn=Search Whatever dictionary you are using, it is not the OED. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 04:42
  • @RoaringFish http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.utc.edu/view/Entry/108233?rskey=VkPwST&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid is the URL I'm using – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:21
  • Stay alert while considering evidence like this, though provided helpfully by standard sources. "You know, when it lightnings, de angels is peepin' in de lookin' glass." is not English. – Kris Nov 07 '14 at 05:21
  • @Kris It's dialect, for sure, but it's still English. But that's why the citations that I found (Zora Neal Hurston was quoted by the OED, not me) came from academic journals. See citations from 1960 and 1992. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:26
  • @guifa.. the URL is not the issue - I have the same quotes in my own answer. The problem is your inability to distinguish quotes from an entry. Waving quotes from the OED, and declaring that the OED 'lists lightning as a verb with lightninged as the past tense' is misleading to the point of dishonesty. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 05:38
  • @RoaringFish so... the fact that the OED would list lightning twice, once under a noun heading and once under a verb heading means nothing? You're either being willfully ignorant or intentionally obtuse at this point, besides ignoring the ample evidence I've provided of actual real-world use of lightning as a verb unto itself with past tense, past participle, and present simple usages. If you search for "lightning", you will receive two headwords, one as a noun, and one as a verb, again as I'll have documented in my update. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:43
  • @guifa ~ you don't seem to know what 'list' means. Look at the entry for lightning as a noun as I have posted already. You get etymology, history, several meanings, slang use, compounds, etc. That is an entry. Now look at your alleged 'entry' for lightning as a verb - no history, no meanings, no other usage, no compounds, no information, nothing. Just two examples of use in the early 20th century and a link to the noun entry. That is because what you are looking at is not an entry. It is a simple example of usage, and saying otherwise is misleading. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 05:59
  • @RoaringFish It has an etymology (formed from lightning, n.) and it has a definition (synonym of lighten in its second verbal entry, 6th definition). But to be clear, you then consider lightningy to not be a word, "just usage" because it too has a sparse entry? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 06:04
  • @guifa ~ It doesn't have an etymology - it links back to the entry. The entry lemma is the noun lightning. What you are calling a 'definition' though we can all see that there is none, is a link back to the entry for the verb form lemma lighten. It is just example quotes, with links to the relevant entries where you can find etymology and meanings. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 06:17
  • @RoaringFish Right, so I'm just imagining where it says "ETYMOLOGY" and showing it as derived from the noun form not the verb lighten? What it is linking back to in the definition is a specific definition with lighten and stating that it is synonymous (hence the = sign), and in addition, stating that it can be used figuratively. But in any case, you are still ignoring the ample number of quotes from academic journals where it is used. If it didn't exist, and only had, as you say, two quotes in the past 100 years, pray tell, where did I find these quotes from? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 06:25
  • Lighten is a verb, listed in the OED. Lightening is a verbal noun (gerund if you wish) formed by adding -ing and listed as a noun in the OED as lightening and lightning. You are saying is that lightning is a verb, the OED not only forgot to list with its own entry but mistakenly listed it as a noun, twice, and that this verb - incredibly - has no -ing form! You prop this nonsense up with 6 examples from the past hundred years and pretend that is common usage. I have one single link with 11 examples of lightened. If I get 6 examples of 'goed', will you insist that 'went' is wrong? – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 06:48
  • Whatever. I can reach no other conclusion other than that you are being completely and willfully ignorant to the facts. I have never once stated that lightened is an invalid usage, only that it is the past tense of lighten, not lightning which is a separate verb and at this point I've presented every single piece of evidence to the contrary and you continue to ignore it. The OED lists lightning (sans e) under one entry as a noun, and under a separate entry as a verb. Or are you so blind as to not see the little v. after the entry on my screenshots? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 06:51
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    @RoaringFish Just because you don't use a form doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sometimes variations exist in a language. You cite Dictionary.com, yet apparently conveniently ignore the fact that it too includes lightning as a verb, with lightninged as its past tense with lightning as its invariable present participle. Good Lord Almighty, how obtuse can you be? How much more evidence do you need? I accept that people say lightened even though I frankly had never heard it (or at least noticed it) until today. Why do you refuse to do the same with lightninged? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 06:57
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 08:28
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The word you are looking for is lightened.

"It thundered and lightened for hours" from Dictionary.com

Eleven more examples of lightened in use

Some individual examples:

Before it thundered and lightened, or ever the foundations of paradise were laid

On the 11th of April, 1824, it thundered and lightened considerably

In the night of Wednesday, Dec 4, it thundered and lightened very much. We have had wet weather ever since and last night from eleven to one in the morning it thundered and lightened again with great violence

More modern examples:

@ooGloryoo me too! it thundered and lightened and poured here all night

Barely half an hour later it thundered and lightened!

Turning to Ngram, this one is for thundered and lightened versus thundered and lightninged, and it says that thundered and lightninged is not found. This one is for lightninged on its own, and it is also 'nothing found' This suggests that whatever dictionaries say, the word lightninged is not in widespread use.

The reason for this lies in the etymology. The easy-access one is Etymology Online where we find that lightning is not a verb as some are insisting, but is actually a verbal noun formed by adding the -ing suffix to lighten.

The paid access one is the good old OED that has more information. Here, we find that lightning is still listed as a noun and not a verb:

lightning, n.

Pronunciation: /ˈlaɪtnɪŋ/ Forms: Also ME liȝtnynge, ME, 15 lyghtnyng, ME–15 lightnyng, lyght(e)nynge, lyt(e)nynge, (ME litynnynge, 15 lyghteling), 15–17 lightening, 16–17 light'ning.

Etymology: Special use of lightening n.2; now differentiated in spelling.

1. The visible discharge of electricity between one group of clouds and another, or between the clouds and the ground. Also in particularized sense (now rare), A flash of lightning. like lightning, with the swiftness of lightning. Also in phr. †in less than, †to last no longer than a lightning .

Note that the etymology is the same a lightening. So... we take a look at what OED has to say about lightening:

lightening, n.2

Pronunciation: /ˈlaɪt(ə)nɪŋ/ Forms: See also lightning n. Etymology: < lighten v.2 + -ing suffix1.

a. The shedding or shining of light; suffusion with light, lighting up; fig. enlightenment, illumination.

Here we see that lightening is again a noun, formed by adding the suffix -ing to the verb lighten.

In simple terms, Etymology Online and the Oxford English Dictionary both tell us that lightning is the -ing form of lighten. Adding an -ed suffix to a word that already has an -ing suffix is obvious nonsense.

The past form of lightning is formed by going back to the root lighten and adding an -ed suffix to get lightened

Staying with OED, if we search it for lightninged, it has no entry. It returns only two quotations from early 20th century gazettes:

1903 Westm. Gaz. 16 Nov. 8/2 The two metal balls..thundered and lightninged as they delivered the message.

1926 H. Caine in Strand Mag. Jan. 20/1 Mr. Gladstone leapt to his feet, whereupon the air of the House thundered and lightninged for a short ten minutes.

This confirms the Ngram result that lightninged is not in widespread use.

Roaring Fish
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    This answers for lighten, not lightning. – user0721090601 Nov 06 '14 at 12:49
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    Then why do they all say "thundered and lightened"? You think first it thundered, then they all ran outside and made something lighter? – Roaring Fish Nov 06 '14 at 13:01
  • @guifa: lightning was derived from the gerund form (lightening) of lighten in ME. So Roaring Fish's answer is apropos. – Robusto Nov 06 '14 at 14:01
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    Thundered and lightninged is very much found: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=thundered+and+lightninged&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cthundered%20and%20lightninged%3B%2Cc0 – user0721090601 Nov 06 '14 at 14:03
  • @Robusto regardless the source of the the word, it is now a verb in its own right, used more frequently for the meteorological sense than its original. It's like someone asking a question about enlighten and answering with lighten. – user0721090601 Nov 06 '14 at 14:40
  • Guifa ~ can you give us the infinitive and progressive forms of this verb? – Roaring Fish Nov 06 '14 at 14:49
  • the forecast said it was going to lightning today, and indeed it is lightning outside now – user0721090601 Nov 06 '14 at 15:39
  • @guifa ~ just to confirm... your suggestion is that lightning is a verb that has no -ing form? – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 02:21
  • @RoaringFish it has a present participle, but it is invariable from the bare form of the verb. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 02:28
  • @guifa ~ I asked about -ing form, not present participle as that is only one of the three -ing forms none of which can be used with your lightning verb. Regardless of that, a present participle is, by definition, formed by verb + ing, but here you tell us it is invariant. That doesn't look very convincing at all given that you are insistant that the past form is not invariant but formed from verb + ed, so could you support it from a convincing source saying that lightning is a verb with an invariant present participle, and/or examples of other (action) verbs that are treated the same way? – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 03:19
  • @guifa ~ actually... don't bother looking. It will take too long so I will do it for you: - "lightning (n.) late 13c., present participle of lightnen "make bright," extended form of Old English lihting, from leht (see light (n.))." You see... lightning is already the -ing form, so your lightninged makes as much sense as 'swimminged' or 'cookinged'. The bare infinitive is lighten, hence the past participle of base verb + -ed is lightened. Sources: -> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lightning; http://illustratedetymology.com/Lightning – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 03:45
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    I frankly don't care what lightning's etymology is, you're committing an etymological fallacy. It is, today, a verb unto itself. You can deny that until you're blue in the face but that doesn't change reality. There is one verb with bare infinitive lighten, and there is another one that is lightning. I'm sorry that that is a difficult concept for you to grasp, and I'm sorry that the OED isn't a good enough source for you. For most people it is, and for most people, NGrams are sufficient enough to show use. Or do you deny that lightninged has shown up in published works? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 03:55
  • Your own post claims that lightninged isn't found on Ngrams yet... surprise! It is. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 03:57
  • @guifa ~ I checked the OED and is doesn't list lightning as a verb or lightninged as a past form. Can you provide a link to where you claim to have got this from? – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 04:44
  • @RoaringFish I have quoted the entry in my answer along with scholarly uses of the term. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:03
  • @guifa... a couple of quotes is not OED listing lighteninged as a past form. As I said, there is no entry for lightninged and you a misleading people by saying there is. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 05:11
  • Um, did you not read the first one that is directly from the OED? But fine, I've screencapped the entry and included it in my answer. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:16
  • I know the difference between quotes and a listing. Why don't you? What that is telling you is that the OED has two quotes including lightninged as a verb. That is not "the OED lists it" That would require an entry of its own which doesn't exist. To most of us, a word used twice in the past 100 years is not in widespread use. The verb actually listed, as in it has an entry and is not just a couple of quotes, is lighten. – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 05:21
  • @RoaringFish The picture I just posted clearly shows that it has its own entry. But fine, since that's not good enough for you, tomorrow when I get onto campus, I'll put up a print copy of it at the library and submit yet another piece of evidence of it having its own entry. And if you're going to say it's used only twice in the past 100 years, what of the citations that I have provided? Are you going to claim I'm misinterpreting them? – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 05:57
  • Learn what an OED entry is here -> http://www.oed.com/public/entrydisplay/the-entry-display – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 06:08
  • @RoaringFish right, you're just proving my point. There is a unique and individual entry for lightning, v.. Seriously, you're not even grasping at straws at this point. You're just wrong. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 07:17
  • Then explain why your pretence at a 'unique and individual entry for lightning, v' is completely different to what the OED says is an entry. The OED says an entry has an information panel with etymology, forms, meanings, citations, cross-references, etc. and you say they don't. I believe what the OED says is an entry... – Roaring Fish Nov 07 '14 at 07:39
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    Let us continue this discussion in chat. – user0721090601 Nov 07 '14 at 08:29
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Maybe this is dialectal because i couldn't find it anywhere but growing up I always heard It's lightninging for the present progressive tense and It lightninged for the past.

Alex L.
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  • Yes Alex. I'm starting to think so as well - perhaps it varies upon the dialect. But from the debate between the folks on the other answers I think lightninged seems more acceptable. Again, its seems more like a dialect. – itsols Nov 08 '14 at 00:55
  • Which is your dialect? That's kinda cool that you have the double -ing. – user0721090601 Nov 09 '14 at 00:38
  • I grew up in northern New York about an hour or so south of Montreal. – Alex L. Nov 11 '14 at 08:00
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In reading the above comments, I can't figure out how people come to their conclusions. The word 'lightening' and 'lightning' are two completely different words. You can use the root word 'lighten', but there is no root word for 'lightning'. That IS the word. Merriam Webster definitely has different definitions for each of the words.

Also, here is a more clear explanation: http://www.queens-english-society.com/lightning-vs-lightening

Kelley Willis
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