a great flood of water; inundation; flood.
a drenching rain; downpour.
anything that overwhelms like a flood.
a deluge of mail.
the Deluge. flood.
a great flood of water
torrential rain; downpour
an overwhelming rush or number
a deluge of requests
to flood, as with water; soak, swamp, or drown
to overwhelm or overrun; inundate
See flood.
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English, from Old French, from Latin dīluvium “flood,” equivalent to dīluv-, base of dīluere “to wash away, dissolve” ( dī- di 2 + -luere, combining form of lavere “to wash”) + -ium -ium
Feeling overwhelmed, like you're underwater? You might be experiencing a deluge — like when you've been given a deluge of homework over vacation: a dozen term papers, two dozen books to read, and a mile-high stack of math problems. The noun deluge is an overwhelming amount of something in general, such as work, people, or questions. Because of its Latin roots, however, in particular it means an overwhelming amount of water. It comes from diluvian, which means flood. The verb deluge similarly means to overwhelm or inundate with something, particularly water. The hurricane deluged the island with rain. A deluge isn't always a bad thing, however. One thing most people would like to be deluged with? Money.
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Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer, said Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial deluge was notable.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 10, 2026
But a deluge of used EVs will hit the market starting this month, with more in the coming years.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 15, 2026
But Microsoft and Meta were hit hard by worries about their capital spending plans, which caused the Mag Seven ETF to drop about 0.5% the day after the earnings deluge.
From Barron's • May 1, 2026
Worryingly, Jones draws a close analogy with the present-day situation as he expects the deluge of planned IPO issuance this year, in the form of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI, to inundate the market completely.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 28, 2026
But one of the many people who regularly brought unpleasant news of the deluge had told her that the company was dismantling its dispensaries to move them to where it was not raining.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
