Cascade

How to spell cascade

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cascade

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cascade mean?

1. nounA waterfall or a process in which something falls, flows, or passes downward in a continuous succession.
2. verbTo fall, pour, or be passed downward in large quantities or in succession.

Cascade in a sentence

• noun

  The mountain stream dropped over the rocks in a foaming cascade.

• verb

  The new policy will cascade down through every department by Friday.

• noun

  A single missed deadline set off a cascade of delays across the project.

• verb

  Water began to cascade over the dam after the heavy rain.

Where does cascade come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word travelled into English from the Italian cascata, which named a waterfall, built on the verb cascare meaning 'to fall'. That verb traces back to a Late Latin form related to casicare and ultimately to the Latin cadere, meaning 'to fall', the same root that lies behind 'cadence', 'decay' and 'accident'. The Italian noun was reshaped in French as cascade and adopted into English in the middle of the 1600s, first describing an ornamental waterfall in a garden where water tumbled down a series of steps. From that picture of water spilling down in stages came the modern figurative senses of anything that pours or passes downward in succession, such as a cascade of emails or a cascade of failures. The single 'c' in the middle and the soft '-ade' ending mirror the French spelling, which is why writers rarely double a letter here even though the word sounds doubled.

How the word is built

• cascad- (from Italian cascare 'to fall')
• -e (noun/verb ending)