avalanche

plural avalanches

1. A large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.

   They were drinking from a fountain / That was pouring like an avalanche / Coming down the mountain

   1996, “Pepper”, performed by Butthole Surfers

   Synonyms: snowslide, snowslip

2. A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
3. broadlyA sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.

   I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul

   1971, Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche”, in Songs of Love and Hate

   2 more examples

   Yes, but she talked it away. She uses a whole language to herself. Her discourse is an avalanche of words, beneath which the hearers are overwhelmed.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 177

   The apparent success of the City and South London triggered an avalanche of bills for Tube railways, and in 1892 a Joint Select Committee of Parliament set out some ground rules.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 109

   Synonyms: barrage, blitz

present singular third person avalanches · participle present avalanching · participle past avalanched · past avalanched

1. intransitiveTo descend like an avalanche.

   Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

   1916, Robert Frost, Birches, lines 10–11

   2 more examples

   Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to recollect where we were—[…] We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. […] ¶ Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged somebody.

   1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter IV, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, pages 38–39

   As it happened, I had progressed only some few feet out onto the snow when a clean-cut section stripped off the surface and avalanched.

   1959, Mike Banks, chapter 7, in Rakaposhi, New York: Barnes, published 1960, page 95

2. transitiveTo come down upon; to overwhelm.

   The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.

   1 more example

   The applications were doubtless snowed under in the maze of official correspondence which avalanched the new government.

   1961, William Alexander Deans, chapter 9, in Muffled Drumbeats in the Congo, page 95

3. transitiveTo propel downward like an avalanche.

   Then another misfortune avalanched itself upon me, before even I had fully taken in the extent of the first.

   1930, Arthur Gask, chapter 11, in The Shadow of Larose

   3 more examples

   When our artist and I were dropped down our first coal-mine, we felt a leetle bit anxious. It was something new. But we have been avalanched down the incline from Peak Forest, and boomeranged round the sudden curve at Rowsley, and have run the gauntlet at Penistone and King’s Cross without ever taking the precaution to say “God help us.”

   1899, Robert Blatchford, “Signals”, in Dismal England, London: Walter Scott, page 147

   The scuppers could not carry off the burden of water on the schooner’s deck. She rolled it out and took it in over one rail and the other; and at times, nose thrown skyward, sitting down on her heel, she avalanched it aft.

   1912, Jack London, A Sun of the Son, Chapter Eight, IV

   Swelter, following at high speed, had caught his toe at the raised lip of the opening, and unable to check his momentum, had avalanched himself into warm water.

   1946, Mervyn Peake, “Blood at Midnight”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode