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/tˈaɪdəl weɪv/ Listen

noun

Tidal wave n.

An unusually high wave from the sea, sometimes reaching far inland and causing great destruction, and usually caused by some event, such as an earthquake, far from the shore. In Japan, such a wave is called a tsunami.

(fig.) An unusually large quantity of items or events requiring attention and causing strain on the capacity to handle them; as, a tidal wave of orders for a new product; a tidal wave of tourists.

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Etymology of 'Tidal wave'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tidal wave" Quotes from Famous Books

... shocks being so frequent and severe that people abandoned their houses and slept on the open ground. The most destructive shocks came in September, when two Mission houses were destroyed and many of their inmates killed. At Santa Barbara a tidal wave invaded the coast and flowed some distance into ...

— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... ourself away from it, the game which is so exciting as to cause us to forget all else in watching it, the lecture or sermon which is so interesting that we are absorbed in listening to it, that claims our best thought and comprehension. It is when our mind's powers are thus driven by a tidal wave of interest that we are at our best, and that we receive and register the lasting impressions which become a part of our ...

— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... famine at Orissa, destroyed over thirty thousand of their houses; and, three years later, in 1870, another cyclone was equally destructive among these dwellings. The Hoogly River is visited, during the monsoons, about the last of April, by a tidal wave, which dashes up from the sea at a speed of twenty miles an hour, causing much destruction. Ships lying off the city often part their cables, and are driven on shore; while many small craft, along the eighty miles of river course, are ...

— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... Deity could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or devastated by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... profoundly shaken by it, though not moved from their original position. They would all stay where they were, of course—Alden with his mother, and Edith with her husband. Then, with a shock, Edith remembered Rosemary—she was the one who had been swept aside as though by a tidal wave. ...

— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

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