Flood

Flood

A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land. The European Union (EU) Floods Directive defines a flood as a covering by water of land not normally covered by water. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes its usual boundaries, or may be due to accumulation of rainwater on saturated ground in an areal flood.

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Famous quotes containing the word flood:

    It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    My ark sings in the sun
    At God speeded summer’s end
    And the flood flowers now.
    Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    Hearing the low sound
    of a cloud scattering rain
    at midnight
    and thinking for an eternity
    on his absent young wife,
    a traveller heaved a sigh
    and with a flood of tears
    howled the whole night long.
    Now, villagers won’t let him stay
    in their place anymore.
    Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)