avalanchenoun/ˈævəlɑːnʃ/

• 1

  A large mass or body of snow and ice sliding swiftly down a mountain side, or falling down a precipice.

  • They were drinking from a fountain / That was pouring like an avalanche / Coming down the mountain
• 2

  A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.

• 3

  A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.

  • 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.
  • I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul

avalancheverb/ˈævəlɑːnʃ/

• 1

  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 inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. […] ¶ Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged somebody.
  • Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
• 2

  To 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.
• 3

  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 taking the precaution to say “God help us.”
  • The scuppers could not carry off the burden of water on the schooner’s deck. 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.