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eruption

UK/ɪˈɹʌpʃən/US/ɪˈɹʌpʃən/
nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,291 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: eruptions

An eruption is the explosive moment a volcano blows its top. A violent eruption, the eruption began, ash from the eruption.

How explosive one is depends on the thickness of the magma: runny lava flows out and thick magma traps gas until it bursts. A large eruption cools the whole planet for a year or two by throwing dust into the upper atmosphere.

Wolfgang Beyer · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of eruption

  1. 1nouneruptionThe explosive moment a volcano blows its top.B2

    “The eruption covered the town in a thick layer of ash.”

eruption is an explosion.

Where it comes from

Latin eruptio comes from erumpere, to burst out — e, out, plus rumpere, to break.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *Hrewp-

  2. Latin

    eruptio

  3. Middle French

    éruption

  4. English, today

    eruption

From Middle French éruption, from Latin eruptio.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

eruption in the wild

  • A new cinder cone eventually grew out of its collapse scar from eruptions in the 2020s.

    Krakatoa

  • Six years after the eruption, most lakes in the area had returned to their normal state.

    Mount St. Helens

  • After its 1980 eruption, the volcano experienced continuous volcanic activity until 2008.

    Mount St. Helens

  • The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae and other settlements.

    Mount Vesuvius

  • More than 1,000 people are thought to have died in the eruption, though the exact toll is unknown.

    Mount Vesuvius

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.