How to use avalanche in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Avalanche means a large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice. Example: “The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.”

Examples of avalanche by meaning

nounA 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 soul1971, Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche”, in Songs of Love and Hate
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

verbTo descend like an avalanche.

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

verbTo 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

verbTo propel downward like an avalanche.

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

More sentences with avalanche

The well-trained team rescued everyone after the avalanche.From the entry rescue
The snow is avalanching the skiers.From the entry avalanching
And a gathering avalanche of numbers attests to an economic disaster that is probably already upon us.2020 July 19, John Harris, “Now Britain stands at the crossroads. Will we choose dread or hope?”, in The Guardian. From the entry racing certainty
Limited space in your shower can cause bottle avalanches, water leaks, and accidental butt brushing.2017 June 22, Maria Cassano, “21 Genius Inventions That Make Your Bathroom Cleaner & More Hygienic”, in Bustle. From the entry heiny
She knew from avalanche safety courses that outstretched hands might puncture the ice surface and alert rescuers.2012 December 26, John Branch, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times…. From the entry breath
The avalanche spread and stopped, locking everything it carried into an icy cocoon.2012, John Branch, “Snow fall: The avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN…. From the entry impenetrable
Remember that the typical avalanche victim is in his late 20s.2005 January 17, “Interview: Ian McCammon discusses the factors that lead people to risk their lives in avalanche conditions”, in Day to…. From the entry hotdoggy
Avoid convex surfaces, especially on lee ridges; this is where slab avalanches most frequently start.2004, Craig Connally, The Mountaineering Handbook, page 48. From the entry whumpf
Overdrifting of snow forms huge drifts or overdrifts, the shearing of which usually starts an avalanche.2003, Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Geographica - Volume 35, page 249. From the entry overdrift
The Scouts learned from expert Keith Burke that snow avalanches come in different forms.2001 Mar, Buck Tilton, “Cold Comfort”, in Boys Life, volume 91, number 3, page 18. From the entry sluff
The source-drain breakdown characteristic of NMOSFETS exhibits an abrupt curve due to avalanche breakdown following punchthrough.1990 March, Katsushi Asahina, Shuji Murakami, Katsuki Ichinose, Fuyumi Minami, Yasuhiro Funakoshi, “A 256-K 13-Nanosecond CMOS SRAM”, in…. From the entry nMOSFET
They go, but are overwhelmed by an avalanche, while the wife and the huntsman escape unharmed.1903 February 7, “Max” [pseudonym; Max Beerbohm], “Ibsen’s ‘Epilogue’”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art…. From the entry inenubilable
This business of the avalanche is treated by the critics as something quite inenubilable.1903 February 7, “Max” [pseudonym; Max Beerbohm], “Ibsen’s ‘Epilogue’”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art…. From the entry inenubilable
It seemed he met his end in the avalanche when he went to help the traders and monks from Zhongguo.2019, Adity Kay, Emperor Vikramaditya, Gurugram, Haryana: Hachette India, →ISBN. From the entry Zhongguo
With one misproof piled on top of another, we end up under an avalanche of falsehoods, distortions, and non-evidence.2013, Tony Burke, Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery?. From the entry misproof
The North Face of the Eiger is notoriously fickle, frequently rebuffing the world’s most experienced climbers with stonefall, storms and avalanches.2007 August 4, Stephen Venables, “In the Alps, a Conquest Takes Two Generations”, in New York Times. From the entry stonefall
Cryokinetics are especially helpful around avalanches and icebergs.2007, Sherrilyn Kenyon, The Dark-Hunter Companion, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN. From the entry cryokinetic
Does resisting the avalanche of advertising take a slannish mind?2006 March 28, Lloyd Penney, “[Letter]”, in And furthermore..., number 3, page 6. From the entry slannish
As a ski patroller, your duties may include watching out for avalanches, maintaining trails, and keeping track of weather data.2006, Alecia T. Devantier, Carol A. Turkington, Extraordinary Jobs for Adventurers, →ISBN, page 108. From the entry ski patroller
A powder or "sluff" avalanche starts at a single point and fans out as surface snow slides downhill.2001 Mar, Buck Tilton, “Cold Comfort”, in Boys Life, volume 91, number 3, page 18. From the entry sluff
Man alive, they'd overwhelm us like an avalanche.c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden…. From the entry man alive
Alpinist Herman Stelling reportedly noted Thursday that the first few seconds of being swept up in a cataclysmic avalanche was actually pretty fun.2024 January 11, “First Seconds Of Being Swept Up By Avalanche Pretty Fun”, in The Onion. From the entry snowpack
Avalanche Peak is without question the most popular one to climb and is the only mountain marked with a poled route to the summit.2018, Brett Atkinson, Peter Dragicevich, Lonely Planet New Zealand's South Island, Lonely Planet. From the entry poled route
On July 17, a glacier in Rutog county in western Tibet suddenly slid, causing one of the largest ice avalanches ever documented.2016 September 8, Kata Karáth, “Climate change could be to blame for an unusual avalanche in Tibet that can be seen from space”, in…. From the entry Rutog
Lest it be buried forever in this avalanche of new "exoticatinis," here is a classic recipe from a very old bartender's manual.2015 April 30, Edie Hall, Cooking with Oma: A Link with the Past, a Bridge to the Future, iUniverse, →ISBN. From the entry appletini
With an avalanche of state-based initiatives to reform the criminal justice system, it is easy to ignore happenings at the federal level.January 2014, The Felonization of America Right on Crime. From the entry felonization
Within seconds, the avalanche was the size of more than a thousand cars barreling down the mountain and weighed millions of pounds.2012, John Branch, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in New York Times. From the entry barrel
State officials and ski industry experts say the conservative antichange mentality at Alta was partly forged by the same geography that produces avalanches.2009 March 20, Kirk Johnson, “Stopping Avalanches Without the Big Guns”, in New York Times. From the entry antichange
Instead of freeing a beautiful slice of marbled meat, my knife unleashed a steaming avalanche of something brown and granular onto the platter.2003 January 4, Jim Kershner, “Happy Turducken Day”, in The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.: Cowles Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry turducken
A deposit containing blocks of varied compositions with rounded shapes is more likely to have been formed by a lahar than by a glowing avalanche.2000, Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, Alexander R. McBirney, Volcanology, page 138. From the entry lahar
Just below it leaned a tottering crag that would have toppled, starting an avalanche on an acclivity where no sliding mass could stop.1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 8, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC. From the entry acclivity
An avalanche sloughing off a Utah mountainside killed a state Department of Transportation avalanche forecaster while he was surveying snow levels near a popular winter recreation area, authorities reported.2013 April 13, Michael Mello, “Avalanche forecaster killed in Utah avalanche”, in Los Angeles Times. From the entry slough

Meaning of avalanche

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

Full definition of avalanche

Questions about avalanche in a sentence

How do you use avalanche in a sentence?: Avalanche is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.”
What is a short sentence with avalanche?: “The snow is avalanching the skiers.”
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.

Adapted from Wiktionary: avalanche (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use avalanche in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/avalanche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.