phrases - What does "Thundering typhoons" mean?


What does "Thundering typhoons" mean? Actually it was in the 2011 movie The Adventures of Tintin.



Answer



Thundering typhoons! is an alliterative phrase (sometimes in the extended form Ten thousand thundering typhoons!) used by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner to translate Hergé's Tonnerre de Brest! (a loud daily canon shot to announce the closure of the arsenal at Brest).


It is simply a exclamation not designed to mean anything. Captain Haddock also says Blistering barnacles (or Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!) as a translation of Mille millions de mille milliards de mille sabords! (literally, thousands of millions of thousands of billions of thousands of portholes).


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