Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a gin shop.

1844

New Sprees of London 3: I’ll introduce you to the [...] Lushing, Chanting, and Night-cribs, Bawdikens, Hells, Boosing, and Lightning-cribs, Mum- ming Caseys where you may doss, lush, or feed.

(US) a telegraph operator.

1870		Great Trans-Continental Tourist’s Guide 47/2: [note] Morse is tho father of ‘Lighting-Shovers.’ On the plains Telegraph operators are called ‘Lightning Shovers’.
1873		Pennsylvania School Jrnl June 404/2: Cerebro-spinal meningitis is a tough word for telegraphers [...] A Sioux City lightning-jerker wrote it out ‘Carabo Spencer’s Menagerie’.
1880		Frank Leslie’s Popular Mthly 9 465: Twas ’leven ’clock near Bridger's Gap, / In a station that swayed in the tempest’s sweep, / Where a lightning-jerker enjoyed his nap, / When a call from the canyon broke his sleep.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Jan. 13/3: By all means, let us send a representative to the Berlin telegraphic conference, and let his chief instructions be to belt open the heads of his brother savants and steal their brains, for brains are apparently what our own lightning wrestlers stand most in need of at the present day.
1890		Dead Bird (Sydney) 26 Apr. 2/2: The following little incident occurred in a suburban telegraph office [...] [T]he lightning-dodger’s face expanded, his smile knocked the quill out of his ear [etc].
1899		McLure’s Mag. 12 307: Why, Mr. Hebron, I’d rather see a scab run her than that lightning-jerker.
1900		H. Lawson ‘The Hero of Redclay’ Over the Sliprails 39: The banker, the storekeeper, [...] the postmaster, and his toady, the lightning squirter, were the scrub-aristocracy.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 98: LIGHTNING JERKER OR SQUIRTER: nickname for telegraph operators.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Mar. 3rd sect. 17/6: Andy Mortel! [...] is the latest addition to the ranks of Kalgoorlie telegraph-operators. [...] A practised lightning-jerker and a thoroughly competent officer is Andy.
1938		L. Beebe High Iron 222: Lightning slinger: Telegrapher.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 249: Lightning jerker or lightning squirter, a telegraph operator.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 145: lightning slinger A telegraph operator.

see sense 2 above.

(US) strong whisky.

1845		in Leach Texan 22: I [...] can swoller a Lake Superior o’ lightnin’ water, meanin’ whiskey, in a superior fashion [HDAS].
1971		D. Wells Night People 96: One thing about Ol’ Man Ignorant Oil, alias Bug Juice, alias John Barleycorn, alias Lightning Water, alias Red Eye, alias Fire Water — he sends you lots of messages.

1. (US) misery, punishment, hell.

1866

R.B. Marcy Thirty Years of Army Life 404: Them Britishers must a’ fit better thar than they did down to Horleans, whar Old Hickry gin um the forkedest sort o’ chain-lightnin’.

2. potato spirit [the image is of immediacy and strength of the spirit’s effect].

1869		F. Whymper Travel and Adventure in Alaska 102: Ranging from Cognac to raw vodka, of a class which can only be described by a Californian term as ‘chain lightning’.
1884		Sporting Times 20 Sept. 7/2: Drink plentiful [...] ‘Congo,’ ‘Cape Smoke,’ ‘Chained Lightning,’ ‘Boer Brandy’.
1885		Daily News 22 Dec. in Ware (1909) 69/1: On telling him the charge he exclaimed, ‘It’s all nonsense; I only gave her some chain-lightning,’ which he understood to be some foreign spirit.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 69/1: Chain lightning (L. Class, Lond.) Potato spirit, imported from Germany. Filthy mess — poisonous to a degree. Smuggled chiefly.

3. (orig. US, also chained lightning) strong, if cheap, whisky [the image is of immediacy and strength of the spirit’s effect].

1838		J.C. Neal Charcoal Sketches (1865) 66: Rail-Road Stone Fence chain lightning & other choice Likkers.
1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms 208: Many and very singular names have been given to the various compounds or mixtures of spirituous liquors and wines, served up in fashionable bar-rooms in the United States. The following list is taken from one advertisement: [...] Chain-lightning.
1857		Santa Barbara Gazette 29 Jan. 4/3: The drinks ain’t no good here — there ain’t no variety in them, neither; no white-nose, apple-jack, stone-wall, chain-lightning, rail-road, hailstorm [DA].
1860		T. Haliburton Season Ticket 9: They ain’t no compounds here, no mint juleps [...] phlegm cutters, chain lightening, or sudden death.
1873		Bristol Mercury 19 Apr. 6/4: A man I had known [...] was ‘dead beat’ trying to live on ‘Rotgut’ whiskey or ‘chained lightning’ without eating anything.
1889		L.C. D’Oyle in Cornhill Mag. Jan. 51: It was variously called for as tangle-foot, snake-poison, [...] chain-lightning, or other fancy name, but it was never called for as whisky [DA].
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 16: Chain Lightning, bad liquor, said to kill a mile off.
1890		D’Oyle Notches 8: ‘Fine Old Rye Whisky’ [...] was the [...] title which Old Hank was wont to affix to his bottle of ‘Chain-lightning’ [DA].
1894		Truth (Sydney) 15 July 1/5: Don’t I light up your horizon / With my chain-o’-lightning pizen!
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Nov. 14/2: The doctor, three parts full of chain-lightning, handed over the detached knee-caps, asking ‘What for you want ’em, Mary?’.
1903		Sun. Times (Perth) 16 Aug. 10/3: The black bung sells chain-lightning spirits.
1916		‘Anzac’ On the Anzac Trail 77: [W]hisky that takes the lining of your throat down with it [...] a soothing liquid that licks ‘forty-rod,’ ‘chained lightning,’ or ‘Cape smoke’ to the back of creation.
1918		R.H. Knyvett ‘Over There’ with the Australians 28: There was many a bushman who had never seen a city before who carried a load of liquor that made even his well-seasoned head spin. The ‘chain lightning’ of the bush was outclassed with the cinematograph whiskey of the city.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 11: chained lightning. White mule; southern mountain whiskey.
1938		Townsville Daily Bull. 20 Jan. 2/5: One pack horse was loaded with a decent supply of ‘chain lightning’.

4. an exceptionally able person.

1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 408: Cheat! Cheat is no name for it! Why, he’s double chainlightning at it; he’s cleaned out all the gamblers in Georgia and South Carolina.
1891		M.D. Landon Eli Perkins: Thirty Years of Wit 295: I’m a howler from the prairies of the West [...] I’m chain-lightning; if I ain’t, may I be blessed.
1902		‘Mark Twain’ Stories 456: By jiminy! But he’s chain-lightning!

1. a glass of gin.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 139: A flash of lightning next, / Bess tipt each cull and frow, sir, / Ere they to church did pad, / To have it christen’d Joe, sir.
1800		Sporting Mag. Oct. XVII 34/2: A very handsome libation of that fashionable liquor called flashes of lightning!
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 21: In that truly classical song, the Christening of Little Joey: ‘When Domine had nam’d the Kid [...] A flash of lightning was prepared / For every one that lik’d it’.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 394: The Donkey-driver and the Fish-fag are bang-up for a flash of lightning, to illumine their ideas.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford II 112: The thunders of eloquence being hushed, flashes of lightning, or, as the vulgar say, ‘glasses of gin’, gleamed about.
1836		Bell’s Wkly Messenger 11 Dec. 398/1: Mary wouldn’t take a flash of lightning—port-wine negus with nutmeg, that’s the go—or, perhaps, the veather’s very cold, a little rum and cinnamon.
1838		T.E. Wilks John Smith I ii: Sometimes we have [...] some heavy or a flash of lightning.
1842		Australasian Chron. (Sydney) 19 July 2/1: On all max, lush, and lightning’s flash, the many wax too prolix.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1852		Kendal Mercury 3 Apr. 6/2: A thrum of wins (threepence), and a meg for some sulphur and a flash of lightning (glass of gin).
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: Vat vill ye have? — Flash, I suppose.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Aug. 87/2: Well, says Selwyn, it is not after all so very wonderful a thing for a flash of lightning to follow heavy wet!!!
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Oct. 126/1: ‘What’s the odds,’ said the young improvident, draining off a tumbler of flash, ‘the Governor will stump up’.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 160/1: He would [...] express his desire to add to its comforting influence the stimulant of a ‘flash of lightning’.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1878		A. Lloyd ‘The American Drinks’ in Comic Songs 13: There’s stone-fence, a rattlesnake, a renovator, locomotive [...] a flash of lightning.
1888		Sheffield Eve. Teleg. 14 July 2/2: In a book [...] ‘American and Other Drinks’ we find [...] the ‘Flash of Lightning,’ the ‘Nerver,’ the ‘Livener,’ and the ‘Locomotive’.
1890		C. Hindley Vocab. and Gloss. in True Hist. of Tom and Jerry 174: Flash of Lightning. A glass of gin.
1900		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 1 Sept. 3/6: The language of the London East-end pub [...] ‘Flash o’ lightning’ — A glassful of gin.

2. brandy.

1824

Observer (London) 29 Nov. 4/3: Copious draughts of daffy, with occasional flashes of Gallic lightning.

gin.

1859

C. Mackay Life and Liberty I 169: ‘Gin-sling,’ ‘brandy-smash,’ ‘a streak of lightning,’ ‘whisky-skin,’ ‘mint-julep’ [...] are but a few of the names of the drinks .

(Irish) a penis.

1972

J.B. Keane Letters of Irish Parish Priest 47: There he was with one hand resting on the wall in front of him and the other holding his lightning rod. I did not wait to see whether he was piddling or showing off.

(US, Western) a revolver, a six-gun.

1869		‘South-Western Sl.’ in Overland Monthly (CA) Aug. 126: Among the names of revolvers I remember the following: Meat in the Pot, Blue Lightning, Peacemaker, Mr. Speaker, Black-eyed Susan, Pill-box, My Unconverted Friend.
1936		R.F. Adams Cowboy Lingo 166: The cowboy’s names for his gun were legion [...] ‘blue-lightnin.’.