avalanched

Verb

avalanche (third-person singular simple present avalanches, present participle avalanching, simple past and past participle avalanched)

1. (intransitive) 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
2. (transitive) To come down upon; to overwhelm.
   • 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...1899, Robert Blatchford, “Signals”, in Dismal England, London: Walter Scott, page 147

See all 6 meanings of avalanche