inundation

plural inundations

1. countableuncountableThe act of inundating; an overflow; a flood; a rising and spreading of water over grounds.
2. countableuncountableThe state of being inundated; flooding.

   Crescent City was considered to be at the highest risk of inundation before the arrival of the waves, the NWS said.

   2025 July 30, Nicholas McEntyre, “First tsunami waves strike mainland US in Northern California and Bay Area”, in New York Post, archived from the original on 31 Jul 2025

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   Serious as was the flood damage in England, the bursting of some of the dykes on the coast of Holland resulted in an even more widespread and devastating inundation.

   1953 April, “Devastation in Holland”, in Railway Magazine, page 217

3. countablefigurativelyuncountableAn 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.

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   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.

   Fanny Hill

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

1. EgyptologyOne of the three seasons of Ancient Egypt.