avalanche
UK/ˈævəlɑːnʃ//ˈævəlæn(t)ʃ/
avalanche noun: a large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.
Noun
avalanche (plural avalanches)
- 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 mountain1996, “Pepper”, performed by Butthole Surfers
- A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
- A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.
- 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
- I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul1971, Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche”, in Songs of Love and Hate
Verb
avalanche (third-person singular simple present avalanches, present participle avalanching, simple past and past participle avalanched)
- To descend like an avalanche.
- 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...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
- Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—1916, Robert Frost, Birches, lines 10–11
- To come down upon; to overwhelm.
- The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.
- 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
- 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...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
avalanche meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
avalanche in Hindi
- large sliding mass of snow and ice
- हिमस्खलन himaskhalan
avalanche in Tamil
- பனிச்சரிவு, பனிப்பாறைச் சரிவு, பனிச்சரிவு போன்று வருதல்
avalanche in Urdu
- avalanche
- برفشار barfšār
avalanche in Bengali
- তুষারধস
More languagesFewer languages
- avalanche in Malayalam
- ഹിമപാതം himapātaṁ
- avalanche in Pashto
- يمال yamãl
- avalanche in Arabic
- تَيْهُور tayhūr, اِنْهِيَار ثَلْجِيّ inhiyār ṯaljiyy
- avalanche in Malay
- salji runtuh
- avalanche in Indonesian
- salju longsor, longsor
- avalanche in Persian
- بهمن bahman, رانش زمین, سیل seyl
- avalanche in Thai
- หิมะถล่ม hì-má-tà-lòm
- avalanche in Vietnamese
- tuyết lở, lở tuyết
Examples of avalanche in a sentence
- 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:
- 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:
- 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:
Synonyms of avalanche
Forms of avalanche
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | avalanches |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | avalanches |
| present participle | avalanching |
| past participle | avalanched |
| past | avalanched |
Origin of avalanche
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, Romansh lavina), from Latin lābēs, from lābor (“to slip, slide”).
Words formed from avalanche
Phrases with avalanche
Questions about avalanche
- What does avalanche mean?
- Avalanche means a large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.
- What is avalanche in Hindi?
- Avalanche in Hindi is हिमस्खलन (himaskhalan). See Avalanche meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use avalanche in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is avalanche?
- Avalanche can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce avalanche?
- Avalanche is pronounced /ˈævəlɑːnʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of avalanche?
- The plural of avalanche is avalanches.
Words near avalanche in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: avalanche (page history and authors); avalanche (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); برفشار (Urdu) (page history and authors); avalanche (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-avalanche.ogg.
Cite this entry: “avalanche.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/avalanche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.