INUNDATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does inundation mean? 

• INUNDATION (noun)
  The noun INUNDATION has 2 senses:

1. the rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land

2. an overwhelming number or amount

  Familiarity information: INUNDATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INUNDATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

alluvion; deluge; flood; inundation

Context example:

plains fertilized by annual inundations

Hypernyms ("inundation" is a kind of...):

geological phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the structure or composition of the earth)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inundation"):

debacle (flooding caused by a tumultuous breakup of ice in a river during the spring or summer)

flash flood; flashflood (a sudden local flood of great volume and short duration)

Noachian deluge; Noah's flood; Noah and the Flood; the Flood ((Biblical) the great deluge that is said in the Book of Genesis to have occurred in the time of Noah; it was brought by God upon the earth because of the wickedness of human beings)

Derivation:

inundate (fill or cover completely, usually with water)

inundate (fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An overwhelming number or amount

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Synonyms:

deluge; flood; inundation; torrent

Context example:

a torrent of abuse

Hypernyms ("inundation" is a kind of...):

batch; deal; flock; good deal; great deal; hatful; heap; lot; mass; mess; mickle; mint; mountain; muckle; passel; peck; pile; plenty; pot; quite a little; raft; sight; slew; spate; stack; tidy sum; wad ((often followed by 'of') a large number or amount or extent)

Derivation:

inundate (fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid)

 Context examples 

Paris has had flooding similar to the June 2016 inundation when water levels reached more than six meters (20 feet).

(France's Flooding Rains Examined by NASA’s IMERG, NASA)

Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared—so assiduously sown with the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)