Flooding

How to spell flooding

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flooding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flooding mean?

1. nounThe overflowing of water onto land that is usually dry, or the act of being submerged by such water.
2. verbPresent participle of flood: filling or overwhelming a place or thing completely, often used figuratively.

Flooding in a sentence

• noun

  Heavy rain caused severe flooding across the valley last night.

• verb

  Complaints kept flooding the helpline after the price increase.

• noun

  The insurance policy does not cover damage from flooding near the river.

• verb

  Morning sun was flooding the kitchen with warm light.

Where does flooding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the Old English noun and verb flod, which simply meant a flowing or a great rush of water, and it belongs to the same native Germanic family as the verb 'to flow'. Related forms appear across the old Germanic languages, including the Old Norse flod and the Dutch vloed, all carrying the sense of water in motion or in excess. The familiar double 'o' spelling does not signal a long vowel here, even though the same letters say a long sound in 'food' and 'mood'; in 'flood' and 'blood' the spelling froze centuries ago while the pronunciation drifted to a short 'uh' sound. The '-ing' ending turns the old verb into the action noun we use today, describing the overflowing of water onto normally dry land. Because the spelling and the sound no longer match, the steady reminder is that 'flood' keeps its double 'o' just like the closely related word 'blood'.

How the word is built

• flood (from Old English flod: a flow, a body of water)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)