inundate
English
WOTD – 20 May 2008
Etymology
From Latin inundō (“I flood, overflow”), from undō (“I overflow, I wave”), from unda (“wave”).
Pronunciation
Verb
inundate (third-person singular simple present inundates, present participle inundating, simple past and past participle inundated)
- To cover with large amounts of water; to flood.
- The Dutch would sometimes inundate the land to hinder the Spanish army.
- To overwhelm.
- The agency was inundated with phone calls.
- 1852, The New Monthly Magazine, page 310:
- I don't know any quarter in England where you get such undeniable mutton—mutton that eats like mutton, instead of the nasty watery, stringy, turnipy stuff, neither mutton nor lamb, that other countries are inundated with.
- 1972, Carol A. Nemeyer, Scholarly Reprint Publishing in the United States, New York, N.Y.: R. R. Bowker Co., →ISBN, page 8:
- That books are pouring off the world’s presses at unprecedented rates is a fact often alluded to as a flood that is inundating libraries and the book trades.
Related terms
Translations
to cover with large amounts of water
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to overwhelm
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Anagrams
Esperanto
Latin
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