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lightning rod
noun
- a rodlike conductor installed to divert lightning away from a structure by providing a direct path to the ground.
- a person or thing that attracts and absorbs powerful and especially negative or hostile feelings, opinions, etc., thereby diverting such feelings from other targets:
The unpopular supervisor served as a lightning rod for the criticism that should have been aimed at management.
lightning rod
- A grounded metal rod placed high on a structure to conduct electrical current from a lightning strike directly to the ground, preventing the currents from injuring people or animals or from damaging objects. Lightning rods usually have a sharp, pointed tip, since electric lines of force are more highly concentrated around pointed objects, in this case increasing the attractiveness of the rod compared with other nearby objects.
- See also Saint Elmo's fire
Word History and Origins
Origin of lightning rod1
Example Sentences
Second, Michelle served as a lightning rod in the sense of drawing attacks away from other reform groups.
On the top of the obelisk is a 100-ounce aluminum cap, which acts as a lightning rod.
Indeed Taubira, in particular, has been a lightning rod for opposition contempt.
The show delivered on all the spark a lightning rod host like Dunham should give off.
In 1968, Ted Nugent was a lightning rod, a personification of transformational freedom.
There he paused a moment for breath, and then climbed up the lightning-rod, hand over hand, and gained the roof.
Back along the wall he crawled, and, sliding down the lightning-rod, was once more on the roof of the old hotel.
Only the clumsy old lightning-rod shrieking in its rusty fixtures when the wind blows.
A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a red-headed woodpecker that drums upon a lightning-rod on his neighbor's house.
From this observation to the lightning rod was but a short step.
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