Emily Dickinson Lexicon
Definition for FLOOD
FLOOD, n. [flud; Sax. flod; G. fluth; D. vloed; Sw. flod; Dan. flod; from flow.]
- A great flow of water; a body of moving water; particularly, a body of water, rising, swelling and overflowing land not usually covered with water. Thus there is a flood every spring, in the Connecticut, which inundates the adjacent meadows. There is an annual flood in the Nile, and in the Mississippi.
- The flood, by way of eminence, the deluge; the great body of water which inundated the earth in the days of Noah. Before the flood, men lived to a great age.
- A river; a sense chiefly poetical.
- The flowing of the tide; the semi-diurnal swell or rise of water in the ocean; opposed to ebb. The ship entered the harbor on the flood. Hence flood-tide; young flood; high flood.
- A great quantity; an inundation; an overflowing; abundance; superabundance; as, a flood of bank notes; a flood of paper currency.
- A great body or stream of any fluid substance; as, a flood of light; flood of lava. Hence, figuratively, a flood of vice.
- Menstrual discharge. Harvey.
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