avalanche
verbEtymology From French avalanche, from Franco-Provençal (Savoy) avalançhe, blend of aval (“downhill”) and standard lavençhe, from Vulgar Latin *labanka (compare Occitan lavanca, Italian valanga), of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of Late Latin lābīna (“landslide”) (compare Franco-Provençal (Dauphiné) lavino, Romansh lavina), from Latin lābēs, from lābor (“to slip, slide”).
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.1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter IV, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, pages 38–39:
- Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—1916, Robert Frost, Birches, lines 10–11:
1 more example
- As it happened, I had progressed only some few feet out onto the snow when a clean-cut section stripped off the surface and avalanched.1959, Mike Banks, chapter 7, in Rakaposhi, New York: Barnes, published 1960, page 95:
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.1961, William Alexander Deans, chapter 9, in Muffled Drumbeats in the Congo, page 95:
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.”1899, Robert Blatchford, “Signals”, in Dismal England, London: Walter Scott, page 147:
- 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.1912, Jack London, A Sun of the Son, Chapter Eight, IV:
2 more examples
- Then another misfortune avalanched itself upon me, before even I had fully taken in the extent of the first.1930, Arthur Gask, chapter 11, in The Shadow of Larose:
- Swelter, following at high speed, had caught his toe at the raised lip of the opening, and unable to check his momentum, had avalanched himself into warm water.1946, Mervyn Peake, “Blood at Midnight”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode: