Noun: avalanche
| Singular | avalanche |
| Plural | avalanches |
Sample Sentences
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They were drinking from a fountain / That was pouring like an avalanche / Coming down the mountain [1996, “Pepper”, performed by Butthole Surfers:]
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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:]
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I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul [1971, Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche”, in Songs of Love and Hate:]
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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:]
Nouns inflected like avalanche
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
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”). See: French Nouns '
avalanche', Italian Nouns '
valanga', Latin Nouns '
lābēs'.
Verbs referencing "avalanche"
Italian Nouns
valanga.