1. Flood,flash flood,deluge,freshet,inundation refer to the overflowing of normally dry areas, often after heavy rains. Flood is usually applied to the overflow of a great body of water, as, for example, a river, although it may refer to any water that overflows an area: a flood along the river; a flood in a basement. A flash flood is one that comes so suddenly that no preparation can be made against it; it is usually destructive, but begins almost at once to subside: a flash flood caused by a downpour.Deluge suggests a great downpouring of water, sometimes with destruction: The rain came down in a deluge.Freshet suggests a small, quick overflow such as that caused by heavy rains: a freshet in an abandoned watercourse.Inundation, a literary word, suggests the covering of a great area of land by water: the inundation of thousands of acres.8, 9. inundate, deluge.
Old English flōd; related to Old Norse flōth, Gothic flōdus, Old High German fluot flood, Greek plōtos navigable; see flow, float
Flood
1
noun
the FloodOld Testamentthe flood extending over all the earth from which Noah and his family and livestock were saved in the ark. (Genesis 7–8); the Deluge
Flood
2
noun
Henry . 1732–91, Anglo-Irish politician: leader of the parliamentary opposition to English rule
Old English flod "a flowing of water, flood, an overflowing of land by water, Noah's Flood; mass of water, river, sea, wave," from Proto-Germanic *flothuz (cf. Old Frisian flod, Old Norse floð, Middle Dutch vloet, Dutch vloed, German Flut, Gothic flodus), from PIE verbal stem *pleu- "flow, float" (see pluvial). Figurative use by mid-14c.
v.
1660s, from flood (n.). Related: Flooded; flooding.
A temporary rise of the water level, as in a river or lake or along a seacoast, resulting in its spilling over and out of its natural or artificial confines onto land that is normally dry. Floods are usually caused by excessive runoff from precipitation or snowmelt, or by coastal storm surges or other tidal phenomena.♦ Floods are sometimes described according to their statistical occurrence. A fifty-year flood is a flood having a magnitude that is reached in a particular location on average once every fifty years. In any given year there is a two percent statistical chance of the occurrence of a fifty-year flood and a one percent chance of a hundred-year flood.
