inundate

UK/ˈɪn.ənˌdeɪt/US/ˈɪn.ənˌdeɪt/

verbC12 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans writtenformal · an editor’s judgement

Other forms: inundated, inundating, inundates

To inundate is to flood — or to overwhelm somebody with more than they can handle. Water, or email.

The literal sense is a real flood, and inundated land is under water. The figurative sense is now far commoner, and being inundated with calls, applications or complaints means the volume defeated whoever was answering. It is nearly always passive. The noun inundation belongs mostly to the literal sense, and swamped and deluged do the figurative job with the same watery image.

Definitions of inundate

1verbinundateTo overwhelm somebody with a very large quantity of something.C1
“The office was inundated with applications.”
2verbfloodTo flood an area with water.C1
“The fields will inundate every winter.”

Where it comes from

Inundate is a wave coming in. Latin unda meant a wave and inundāre to flood or overflow, so a person inundated with requests is standing under one.

Proto-Indo-European
*wed-
Latin
inundātus
English, today
inundate

Built from

inundō · Latin — to flood, overflow
undō · Latin — to overflow, wave
unda · Latin — wave

1623; Latin inundātus, the perfect passive participle of inundō (“to flood, overflow”) (see -ate), from in- + undō (“to overflow, wave”), from unda (“wave”) + -ō.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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