flood

FLUD/flʌd/

Pluralfloods

Verbfloods, flooding, flooded

11 meanings of flood

Practice

1
nouncountable
An overflow of water onto normally dry land, usually caused by heavy rain or another large input of water.
The flood swept away bridges and left thousands without shelter.
Heavy monsoon rains caused a flood that submerged the entire district.
Similardeluge, inundation
Oppositedrought
Note
The word's history lies in this sense. Old English flōd goes back to a root meaning "to flow", the same source as German Flut and Dutch vloed. Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) can say "destroy the earth again by flood" with no article, treating flood as a force. Modern reporting prefers the countable plural instead: floods in northern India, a flood season.
2
verbtransitive or intransitive
To overflow, as when water spreads beyond its normal limits after heavy rain.
Low-lying fields flood whenever the river rises after a storm.
Melting snow can flood entire valleys in a single afternoon.
Similaroverflow, inundate, submerge, swamp
Note
The verb works from either side of the overflow. The water floods, but so does the place: the basement flooded with rainwater, low fields flood. It also stretches to crowds, who flood into the streets, with into or out of giving the direction. Compare the "cover or fill" verb, where something actively floods a space.
3
nounfigurativelycountable
A large number or quantity of something arriving more quickly than can easily be handled.
The post office struggled with a flood of packages before the holidays.
Her debut novel was met with a flood of reviews within days.
Similardeluge, torrent, avalanche, wave, barrage
Oppositetrickle
4
verbfigurativelytransitive
To overwhelm someone or something with more of something than can easily be handled.
Fans flooded the box office with calls after tickets sold out.
A single viral post can flood a small shop with orders overnight.
Similarswamp, inundate, overwhelm, deluge, bombard
5
verbtransitive
To cover or partly fill a space as if by a large inflow of water.
Warm light flooded the kitchen at sunrise.
Pull back the blinds and let the morning sun flood the studio.
Similarfill, bathe, suffuse
6
noununcountable
The inflow of the tide as it rises, the opposite of the ebb.
The fishing fleet timed its departure to ride the flood into open water.
During the flood, seawater moves far up the estuary.
Oppositeebb
Note
The tide has its own verb here: the flood makes as the water starts to rise, as in Conrad's "The flood had made" in Heart of Darkness. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar turned this sense into a lasting metaphor, a tide "taken at the flood" that "leads on to fortune". From that line, at the flood means at the high point, the moment to act.
7
nouncountable
A large lamp that casts a broad, bright beam, used to light up stages, fields, or buildings.
A single flood lit the entire courtyard for the evening event.
The groundskeeper switched off the floods after the match ended.
Similarfloodlight
8
verbtransitive or intransitive
To post many lines of text to a chat system rapidly, disrupting the conversation.
Spammers flood the room with copied text to drown out everyone else.
She was banned for trying to flood the chat during the stream.
Similarspam
Note
An Internet use, close kin to the "overwhelm" verb but narrowed to chat. It works with an object (flood the channel, flood people's screens) and without one (banned for flooding). A 1998 Usenet post by Dr. Cat already describes the countermeasure: a spam filter that throws away everything after the first few lines sent by macros or a bot.
9
nouncountable
Menstrual discharge; the monthly flow of blood from the womb.
The young woman dreaded her flood, which left her weak for days.
An unusually heavy flood that month sent her to the doctor.
Similarperiod
10
verbintransitive
To bleed profusely, especially in the period following childbirth.
She started to flood within an hour of delivery.
Midwives feared the patient would flood before help arrived.
Similarhemorrhage, bleed

Less common meaning

11
nounobsolete
The water of the sea or rivers, considered in contrast to the land.
They trusted their lives to the flood, with no land in sight for days.
Who beheld from the safe shore their floating carcasses and broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, under amazement of their hideous change.
1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost
Note
Obsolete now, this sense survives in older verse such as Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), where wreckage lies "covering the flood", meaning the open water itself. Read it there as plain water, not an overflow. In modern writing it would be mistaken for the disaster sense, so keep it for deliberately archaic style.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of flood apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

From Middle English flod, from Old English flōd, going back through Proto-Germanic *flōduz to the root *plew- ("to flow"). It is related to Dutch vloed, German Flut, Danish flod, and Icelandic flóð.