Literary notes about Inundated (AI summary)
In literature, "inundated" is a multifaceted term that vividly conveys both physical and metaphorical overflow. Writers employ it literally to depict natural disasters or environmental scenes—rivers bursting their banks and cities submerged by floodwaters [1, 2, 3]—while also using it figuratively to express an overwhelming abundance of sensations, emotions, or ideas. Thus, light, feelings, or even communications may "inundate" a character or landscape, as when a blazing sun saturates the horizon with brightness [4, 5] or when a heart is overwhelmed with sentiment [6, 7]. This flexible usage enriches the narrative by seamlessly blending tangible natural phenomena with the intangible torrents of human experience [8, 9, 10, 11].
- Its banks are low on either side, and speedily inundated in the hot and rainy seasons.
— from Travels Into Bokhara (Volume 1 of 3) Being the Account of A Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia; Also, Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus, From the Sea to Lahore, With Presents From the King of Great Britain; Performed Under the Orders of the Supreme Government of India, in the Years 1831, 1832, and 1833 by Burnes, Alexander, Sir - On arriving at the cradle from which Paris sprang they found it inundated with water, and it was again necessary to take a boat.
— from Twenty years after by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - The following year the Danube again overflowed its banks and inundated the houses of fifty thousand inhabitants of Vienna.
— from History of the Johnstown Flood Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek. by Willis Fletcher Johnson - The day broke, and a burning glow suffused the horizon; in a few minutes the sun rose and inundated us with light.
— from Adventures of a Young Naturalist by Lucien Biart - Here too sunlight inundated everything, reflected by the room's big mirrors.
— from Elderflowers by Wilhelm Raabe - Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him.
— from Prisoners: Fast Bound In Misery And Iron by Mary Cholmondeley - His gnome’s eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness, sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with lightnings.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - So the Association was inundated with applications of all kinds by person and by letter.
— from Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs by John Thomas Codman - I am so satiated with the great number of detestable books with which we are inundated that I am reduced to punting at faro."
— from Candide by Voltaire - A flood of concupiscence inundated his soul.
— from The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume I) by Paul Ambroise Bigandet - Within less than a century after Luther's death the German was inundated with pedantic barbarisms.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
