From French avalanche, from Arpitan - (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 (compare Franco-Provençal (Dauphiné) lavino, Romansh lavina), from Latin lābēs, from lābor ("to slip, slide").

• (RP) IPA: /ˈævəlɑːnʃ/
• (America, Canada) IPA: /ˈævəlæn(t)ʃ/

avalanche (plural avalanches)

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

   Synonyms: snowslide, snowslip

2. A fall of earth, rocks, etc., similar to that of an avalanche of snow or ice.
3. (by extension) A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx; anything like an avalanche in suddenness and overwhelming quantity.

   Synonyms: barrage, blitz

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC ↗, page 177 ↗:

     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.

• French: avalanche
• German: Lawine, Schneelawine (snow), Eislawine (ice), Gletscherlawine (ice)
• Italian: valanga, slavina
• Portuguese: avalanche, avalanche
• Russian: лави́на
• Spanish: alud, avalancha

• French: avalanche
• German: Lawine
• Italian: frana
• Portuguese: deslize, deslizamento
• Russian: лави́на

• French: avalanche
• Italian: valanga
• Russian: обва́л

avalanche (avalanches, present participle avalanching; simple past and past participle avalanched)

1. (intransitive) To descend like an avalanche.
   • 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 ↗:

     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.

   • 1916, Robert Frost, Birches‎, lines 10–11:

     Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
     Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

2. (transitive) To come down upon; to overwhelm.
   • 1961, William Alexander Deans, chapter 9, in Muffled Drumbeats in the Congo‎, page 95:

     The applications were doubtless snowed under in the maze of official correspondence which avalanched the new government.

   The shelf broke and the boxes avalanched the workers.

3. (transitive) To propel downward like an avalanche.
   • 1912, Jack London, A Sun of the Son‎, Chapter Eight, IV:

     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.

   • 1930, Arthur Gask, chapter 11, in The Shadow of Larose‎:

     Then another misfortune avalanched itself upon me, before even I had fully taken in the extent of the first.