inundation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English inundacioun,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin inundātiō (“an overflowing”),^[4][5][2][6] perhaps through Old French inundacion, which the OED records from the 12th to the 14th century and thinks may be the immediate source.^[4][7] Barnhart suggests the influence of Middle French inondation,^[3] and Skeat derived the word from French.^[8] The modern form French inondation dates from Paré in the 16th century.^[4] The Latin noun is from inundō (“to overflow”),^[4][5][6] from in- (“onto”) and undō (“to rise in waves, flow”),^[5][9] from unda (“a wave”).^[5][6][9] De Vaan takes this noun from Proto-Indo-European *ud-ōr (“water”),^[9] and Etymonline derives it from a nasalized form of *wed- (“water; wet”).^[5] The verb inundate is a back-formation from this noun, recorded from 1623 in Barnhart,^[3][5] or comes from the Latin participle.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

An overflowing of water, a flood: probably before 1425, in a translation of Higden, whose "meruellous invndacion of water" is Noah's flood.^[2][3] The OED dates the same translation 1432–50.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word also meant the flowing of a river and, in medicine, a concentration of watery matter in a sore.^[2] The figurative sense, an overwhelming abundance of something, is dated to 1589 by the OED, in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, and to the mid 16th century by the Shorter Oxford.^[4][7] Johnson (1755) quotes Shakespeare's "the inundation of her tears" and reports Cowley's view that the word implies less than deluge.^[10]

Timeline

• probably before 1425 – an overflowing of water, a flood.^[2][3] The OED has it from 1432–50.^[4]
• 1589 – figurative, an overwhelming abundance.^[4] The Shorter Oxford dates this sense to the mid 16th century.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The rising and spreading of water over land that is not normally covered; a flood: The inundation of the delta came early that spring.^[11][4][7]
2. An overwhelming quantity of something; a deluge: an inundation of complaints.^[11][4][7]

Related words

• inundate
• undulate
• redundant
• surround
• water
• wet

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster