different between avalanche vs deluge

English

Etymology

From French avalanche, from Franco-Provençal (Savoy) avalançhe, blend of aval (“downhill”) and standard lavençhe, from Vulgar Latin *labanka (compare Occitan lavanca, Italian valanga), of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of Late Latin l?b?na (“landslide”) (compare Franco-Provençal (Dauphiné) lavino, Romansch lavina), from Latin l?b?s, from l?bor (“to slip, slide”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?æv?l??n?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?æv?lænt?/

Noun

avalanche (plural avalanches)

1. A large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.

   Synonyms: snowslide, snowslip

2. A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
3. (by extension) A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.

   Synonyms: barrage, blitz

Translations

Verb

avalanche (third-person singular simple present avalanches, present participle avalanching, simple past and past participle avalanched)

1. (intransitive) To descend like an avalanche.
   • 1872, Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter 4,^[1]

     Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to recollect where we were […] We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. […] ¶ Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged somebody.

   • 1916, Robert Frost, “Birches,” lines 10-11,^[2]

     Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

     Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

   • 1959, Mike Banks, Rakaposhi, New York: Barnes, 1960, Chapter 7, p. 95,^[3]

     As it happened, I had progressed only some few feet out onto the snow when a clean-cut section stripped off the surface and avalanched.

2. (transitive) To come down upon; to overwhelm.
   • 1961, William Alexander Deans, Muffled Drumbeats in the Congo, Chapter 9, p. 95,^[4]

     The applications were doubtless snowed under in the maze of official correspondence which avalanched the new government.

   The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.

3. (transitive) To propel downward like an avalanche.
   • 1899, Robert Blatchford, Dismal England, London: Walter Scott, “Signals,” p. 147,^[5]

     When our artist and I were dropped down our first coal-mine, we felt a leetle bit anxious. It was something new. But we have been avalanched down the incline from Peak Forest, and boomeranged round the sudden curve at Rowsley, and have run the gauntlet at Penistone and King’s Cross without ever taking the precaution to say “God help us.”

   • 1912, Jack London, A Sun of the Son, Chapter Eight, IV,^[6]

     The scuppers could not carry off the burden of water on the schooner’s deck. She rolled it out and took it in over one rail and the other; and at times, nose thrown skyward, sitting down on her heel, she avalanched it aft.

   • 1930, Arthur Gask, The Shadow of Larose, Chapter 11,^[7]

     Then another misfortune avalanched itself upon me, before even I had fully taken in the extent of the first.

   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, “Blood at Midnight,”

     Swelter, following at high speed, had caught his toe at the raised lip of the opening, and unable to check his momentum, had avalanched himself into warm water.

Translations

Further reading

• avalanche in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• avalanche in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Etymology

From Franco-Provençal avalançhe (Savoy), blend of aval (“downhill”) and standard lavençhe, from Vulgar Latin *labanka (compare Occitan lavanca, Italian valanga), alteration of Late Latin labina (“landslide”) (compare (Dauphiné) Franco-Provençal lavino, Romansch lavina), from Latin l?bor (“to slip, slide”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /a.va.l???/

Noun

avalanche f (plural avalanches)

1. avalanche

Descendants

• ? English: avalanche
• ? Galician: avalancha
• ? Portuguese: avalanche
• ? Romanian: avalan??
• ? Spanish: avalancha

Further reading

• “avalanche” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Portuguese

Alternative forms

• avalancha

Etymology

From French avalanche, from Savoyard Franco-Provençal avalançhe.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /?a.va.?l??.?i/

Noun

avalanche f (plural avalanches)

1. avalanche (large mass of snow sliding down a mountain side)

   Synonym: alude

2. (figuratively) (sudden, great, or irresistible influx of anything)

English

Etymology

From Middle English deluge, from Old French deluge, alteration of earlier deluvie, from Latin d?luvium, from d?lu? (“wash away”). Doublet of diluvium.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?d?l.ju?d?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?d?l.ju(d)?/, /d??lu(d)?/

Noun

deluge (plural deluges)

1. A great flood or rain.

   The deluge continued for hours, drenching the land and slowing traffic to a halt.

2. An overwhelming amount of something; anything that overwhelms or causes great destruction.

   The rock concert was a deluge of sound.

   • 1848, James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal

     The little bird sits at his door in the sun, / Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, / And lets his illumined being o'errun / With the deluge of summer it receives.

3. (military engineering) A damage control system on navy warships which is activated by excessive temperature within the Vertical Launching System.
   • 2002, NAVEDTRA, Gunner's Mate 14324A

     In the event of a restrained firing or canister overtemperature condition, the deluge system sprays cooling water within the canister until the overtemperature condition no longer exists.

Translations

Verb

deluge (third-person singular simple present deluges, present participle deluging, simple past and past participle deluged)

1. (transitive) To flood with water.
2. (transitive) To overwhelm.

Translations

References

• 1996, T.F. Hoad, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Etymology, Oxford University Press, ?ISBN

See also

• inundate

Middle English

Alternative forms

• diluge

Etymology

From Old French deluge, from Latin d?luvium.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d??liu?d?(?)/

Noun

deluge (Late Middle English)

1. A deluge; a massive flooding or raining.
2. (rare, figuratively) Any cataclysmic or catastrophic event.

Descendants

• English: deluge

References

• “d?l??e, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-08-12.

Old French

Etymology

From Latin d?luvium.

Noun

deluge m (oblique plural deluges, nominative singular deluges, nominative plural deluge)

1. large flood

Descendants

• French: déluge
• ? Middle English: deluge
  • English: deluge