Definition of "avalanche"

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.

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

The apparent success of the City and South London triggered an avalanche of bills for Tube railways, and in 1892 a Joint Select Committee of Parliament set out some ground rules.

2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 109

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], “”, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872

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

1916, Robert Frost, Birches‎, lines 10–11

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

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

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

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