deluge

Etymology

From Middle English deluge, from Old French deluge, alteration of earlier deluvie, from Latin dīluvium, from dīluō (“wash away”). Doublet of diluvium.

noun

1. A great flood or rain.
   The deluge continued for hours, drenching the land and slowing traffic to a halt.
2. An overwhelming amount of something; anything that overwhelms or causes great destruction.
   The rock concert was a deluge of sound.
   The little bird sits at his door in the sun, / Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, / And lets his illumined being o'errun / With the deluge of summer it receives. 1848, James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal
3. (firefighting) A system for flooding or drenching a space, container, or area with water in an emergency to prevent or extinguish a fire.
   deluge system, deluge gun, deluge set
   2002, NAVEDTRA, Gunner's Mate 14324A In the event of a restrained firing or canister overtemperature condition, the deluge system sprays cooling water within the canister until the overtemperature condition no longer exists.
   On June 8, 2005, a decomposition reaction occurred in the manifold system on a mobile acetylene trailer at Western's Bellville plant that caused the fusible plugs of five cylinders to melt, releasing the products of decomposition. The materials released did not ignite before the deluge system was manually activated, controlling the incident. The incident started when a mobile acetylene trailer, with the cylinder valves open and the manifold fully pressurized, was moved into another bay and the block valve was opened, which initiated an acetylene decomposition reaction. 13 January 2009, National Transportation Safety Board, “Earlier Western Accidents”, in Special Investigation Report: Mobile Acetylene Trailer Accidents: Fire During Unloading in Dallas, Texas, July 25, 2007; Fire During Unloading in The Woodlands, Texas, August 7, 2007; and Overturn and Fire in East New Orleans, Louisiana, October 20, 2007, archived from the original on 2022-01-20, page 18

verb

1. (transitive) To flood with water.
   Some areas were deluged with a month's worth of rain in 24 hours.
   South Yorkshire 2019: The track at Conisbrough is deluged by floodwater. Lines were shut and services were disrupted across Yorkshire and the East Midlands. July 29 2020, Andrew Roden, “ORR demands more action on weather resistance”, in Rail, page 21, photo caption
2. (transitive) To overwhelm.
   After the announcement, they were deluged with requests for more information.