Other forms: flooding, floods, flooded
A flood is what happens when water covers land that is usually dry — a river rising over streets and fields. Flash floods, flood defences, the house was flooded.
The verb works both ways: the river flooded, and the cellar was flooded. There is a very common figurative use meaning an overwhelming quantity: a flood of complaints, flooded with applications, and the market is flooded. Note flood plain, the low land a river naturally floods, which is a planning term and an argument in every housing debate. And the Flood with a capital letter means the biblical one.
1nounfloodA large amount of water covering land that is normally dry.
“The floods reached the top of the garden wall.”
2verbcoverTo cover or fill with water.
“The kitchen flooded twice in one winter.”
3nounoverwhelmingAn overwhelming quantity of something.
“There was a flood of letters within a day.”
flood is an overflow of water.
Middle English
flod
English, today
flood
From Middle English flod. Cognate with Scots flude, fluid, stq Floud, Dutch vloed, German Flut, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish flod, Icelandic flóð, and Gothic 𐍆𐌻𐍉𐌳𐌿𐍃.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA