inundation

From Old French inundacion (“flood”) (French inondation), from Latin inundatio (“flood”), form of inundō (“I flood, overflow”) (English inundate).

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

inundation (countable and uncountable, plural inundations)

1. The act of inundating; an overflow; a flood; a rising and spreading of water over grounds.
2. The state of being inundated; flooding
3. (figurative) An overflowing or superfluous abundance; a flood; a great influx.

   There is an inundation of tourists in summer, but in winter the town is almost deserted.

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC:

     But he did not long abuse my patience, for the objects before him had now put him by all his, and, coming out with that formidable machine of his, he lets the fury loose, and pointing it directly to the pouting-lipt mouth, that bid him sweet defiance in dumb-shew, squeezes in the head, and, driving with refreshed rage, breaks in, and plugs up the whole passage of that soft pleasure-conduit, where he makes all shake again, and put, once more, all within me into such an uproar, as nothing could still but a fresh inundation from the very engine of those flames, as well as from all the springs with which nature floats that reservoir of joy, when risen to its flood-mark.

• inundate