flood

[fluhd] /flʌd/
noun
1.
a great flowing or overflowing of water, especially over land not usually submerged.
2.
any great outpouring or stream:
a flood of tears.
3.
the Flood, the universal deluge recorded as having occurred in the days of Noah. Gen. 7.
4.
the rise or flowing in of the tide (opposed to ebb).
5.
a floodlight.
6.
Archaic. a large body of water.
verb (used with object)
7.
to overflow in or cover with a flood; fill to overflowing:
Don't flood the bathtub.
8.
to cover or fill, as if with a flood:
The road was flooded with cars.
9.
to overwhelm with an abundance of something:
to be flooded with mail.
10.
Automotive. to supply too much fuel to (the carburetor), so that the engine fails to start.
11.
to floodlight.
verb (used without object)
12.
to flow or pour in or as if in a flood.
13.
to rise in a flood; overflow.
14.
Pathology.
  1. to suffer uterine hemorrhage, especially in connection with childbirth.
  2. to have an excessive menstrual flow.
Origin
before 900; Middle English flod (noun), Old English flōd; cognate with Gothic flōdus, Old High German fluot (German Flut)
Related forms
floodable, adjective
flooder, noun
floodless, adjective
floodlike, adjective
overflood, verb
preflood, adjective
underflood, verb
unflooded, adjective
well-flooded, adjective
Synonyms
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.
Examples from the web for flood
  • Another is that if there are no glaciers to regulate water flow, flood will alternate with drought.
  • It also replenishes the fertility of flood plain soils.
  • The inconvenience or catastrophe of a flood is the price they sometimes pay.
  • The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information.
  • flood or drip-irrigate your tomatoes and never use an overhead sprinkler.
  • While there is certainly a component of changing flood risk with a changing climate, the problem is fundamentally a spatial one.
  • By underpricing flood risks, the government gives people an incentive to live in flood-prone areas.
  • Digital data will flood the planet-and help us understand it better.
  • Many cultures have flood myths-tales of ancient destruction on an epic scale.
  • They adapted by having squares flood, by having stairs under water by having the first floor of many buildings flood.
British Dictionary definitions for flood

flood

/flʌd/
noun
1.
  1. the inundation of land that is normally dry through the overflowing of a body of water, esp a river
  2. the state of a river that is at an abnormally high level (esp in the phrase in flood) related adjective diluvial
2.
a great outpouring or flow: a flood of words
3.
  1. the rising of the tide from low to high water
  2. (as modifier): the flood tide Compare ebb (sense 3)
4.
(theatre) short for floodlight
5.
(archaic) a large body of water, as the sea or a river
verb
6.
(of water) to inundate or submerge (land) or (of land) to be inundated or submerged
7.
to fill or be filled to overflowing, as with a flood: the children's home was flooded with gifts
8.
(intransitive) to flow; surge: relief flooded through him
9.
to supply an excessive quantity of petrol to (a carburettor or petrol engine) or (of a carburettor, etc) to be supplied with such an excess
10.
(intransitive) to rise to a flood; overflow
11.
(intransitive)
  1. to bleed profusely from the uterus, as following childbirth
  2. to have an abnormally heavy flow of blood during a menstrual period
Derived Forms
floodable, adjective
flooder, noun
floodless, adjective
Word Origin
Old English flōd; related to Old Norse flōth, Gothic flōdus, Old High German fluot flood, Greek plōtos navigable; see flow, float

Flood1

/flʌd/
noun
1.
(Old Testament) the Flood, the flood extending over all the earth from which Noah and his family and livestock were saved in the ark. (Genesis 7–8); the Deluge

Flood2

/flʌd/
noun
1.
Henry. 1732–91, Anglo-Irish politician: leader of the parliamentary opposition to English rule
Word Origin and History for flood
n.

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.

flood in Science
flood
  (flŭd)   
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.
flood in Technology
chat
On a real-time network (whether at the level of TCP/IP, or at the level of, say, IRC), to send a huge amount of data to another user (or a group of users, in a channel) in an attempt to annoy him, lock his terminal, or to overflow his network buffer and thus lose his network connection.
The basic principles of flooding are that you should have better network bandwidth than the person you're trying to flood, and that what you do to flood them (e.g., generate ping requests) should be *less* resource-expensive for your machine to produce than for the victim's machine to deal with. There is also the corrolary that you should avoid being caught.
Failure to follow these principles regularly produces hilarious results, e.g., an IRC user flooding himself off the network while his intended victim is unharmed, the attacker's flood attempt being detected, and him being banned from the network in semi-perpetuity.
See also pingflood, clonebot and botwar.
[Jargon File]
(1997-04-07)
flood in the Bible

an event recorded in Gen. 7 and 8. (See DELUGE.) In Josh. 24:2, 3, 14, 15, the word "flood" (R.V., "river") means the river Euphrates. In Ps. 66:6, this word refers to the river Jordan.