In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a shock wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel. In the mid 19th century, the accepted theory was that lightning produced a vacuum and that the collapse of that vacuum produced what is known as thunder. The Roman philosopher Lucretius held it was from the sound of hail colliding within clouds. Early thinking was that it was made by deities, but the ancient Greek philosophers attributed it to natural causes, such as wind striking clouds ( Anaximander, Aristotle) and movement of air within clouds ( Democritus). The cause of thunder has been the subject of centuries of speculation and scientific inquiry.
The shared Proto-Indo-European root is * tón-r̥ or * tar-, also found in Gaulish Taranis. The name of the Nordic god Thor comes from the Old Norse word for thunder.
In Latin the term was tonare "to thunder". Middle Dutch donre also Old Norse þorr, Old Frisian þuner, Old High German donar, all ultimately descended from Proto-Germanic * þunraz). The d in Modern English thunder (from earlier Old English þunor) is epenthetic, and is now found as well in Modern Dutch donder (cf.
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