Avalanche
['ævəlɑːnʃ] or ['ævəlæntʃ]
Definition
(noun.) a sudden appearance of an overwhelming number of things; 'the program brought an avalanche of mail'.
(noun.) a slide of large masses of snow and ice and mud down a mountain.
(verb.) gather into a huge mass and roll down a mountain, of snow .
Typed by Aileen--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) A large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.
(n.) A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
(n.) A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx of anything.
Editor: Yvonne
Definition
n. a mass of snow and ice sliding down from a mountain: a snow-slip.—v.i. Avāle′ (Spens.) to descend.—v.t. (Spens.) to cause to descend.
Edited by Edward
Examples
- Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- I descended on the miserable man in an irresistible avalanche of indignation, and swept him from the house. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White.
- The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet crash down. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- The office of the Memphis Avalanche was in the same building. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- The Count, at last issuing from his dreadnoughtthreatened to overwhelm her with it as with an avalanche. Charlotte Bronte. Villette.
- Dorothea's feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could be no further preparation. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad.
- Immense glaciers approached the road; we heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein_Or_The Modern Prometheus.
Checked by Bryant