English

Noun

greased lightning ‎(uncountable)

1. Something incredibly fast (now mainly used in comparison: like or faster than greased lightning).
   • 1840, American Philosophical Society, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Vol. XVIII. July 1878 to March 1880:

     We find there quite seriously the monstrous hyperboles of swallowing a camel, of having a wooden beam in the eye, of a camel's going through the eye of a needle, of heaping coals of fire on the head; all well enough as jokes, like the description of the Green Mountain road so steep that "greased lightning could not go down it without the breeching on".

   • 1847-48, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter XIII

     He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the Garrison cup at Quebec races.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:

     And off he pops like greased lightning.

   • 2006, Kerri Pomarolli, If I'm Waiting on God, Then What Am I Doing in a Christian Chatroom?: Confessions of a Do-It-Yourself Single:

     I got on that computer faster than greased lightning and sent him an email.

   • 2006, Mike Lloyd, Only the Gods Decide:

     You have to take your hat off to them. They've moved like greased lightning. I should have remembered about them. Slippery as a 'barrel load of eels' they are.

Translations