avalanche

Etymology

From French avalanche, from Franco-Provençal (Savoy) avalançhe, blend of aval (“downhill”) and standard lavençhe, from Vulgar Latin *labanka (compare Occitan lavanca, Italian valanga), of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of Late Latin lābīna (“landslide”) (compare Franco-Provençal (Dauphiné) lavino, Romansch lavina), from Latin lābēs, from lābor (“to slip, slide”).

noun

1. A large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.
2. A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
3. (by extension) A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.
   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, page 109

verb

1. (intransitive) To 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
   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. (transitive) To come down upon; to overwhelm.
   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
   The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.
3. (transitive) To propel downward like an avalanche.
   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
   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
   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