Meaning
A sudden, completely unexpected event or piece of news that shocks like a lightning strike on a cloudless day. Typically used of dismissals, resignations, defeats or announcements that caught everyone off guard. Neutral to slightly literary register; it carries a strong connotation of shock and usually of unwelcome news. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image is a thunderbolt falling from a clear blue sky, with no storm clouds to warn of it. The Phrase Finder traces the idea to Horace's Ode 34, in which Jupiter's bolt strikes through an unclouded sky, and argues the expression most likely entered English through echoes of that ode in classically educated writers. The earliest known citation is Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837): 'Arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims'. The form 'a bolt out of the blue' then appears in Victorian newspapers (The Standard, 1863; the Dundee Courier, 1875), and wordhistories.net dates the shortened 'out of the blue' to The Spectator of 22 February 1879, noting 'a clap of thunder out of a clear sky' variants already in American papers by 1836.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a bolt out of the blue
- a thunderbolt from the blue
Usage Examples
- The minister's resignation came as a bolt from the blue; not even her closest colleagues had suspected it.
- Losing the contract was a bolt from the blue for a firm that had served the client for twenty years.
- After months of silence, the news arrived like a bolt from the blue: the case would be reopened.