1. [n]  a large flow
2. [n]  the act of flooding; filling to overflowing
3. [n]  light that is a source of artificial illumination having a broad beam; used in photography
4. [n]  the inward flow of the tide; "a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" -Shakespeare
5. [n]  the rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land; "plains fertilized by annual inundations"1
6. [n]  an overwhelming number or amount; "a flood of requests"; "a torrent of abuse"
7. [v]  cover with liquid, usually water; "The swollen river flooded the village"; "The broken vein had flooded blood in her eyes"
8. [v]  become filled to overflowing; "Our basement flooded during the heavy rains"
9. [v]  fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid; "the basement was inundated after the storm"; "The images flooded his mind"
10. [v]  supply with an excess of; "flood the market with tennis shoes"; "Glut the country with cheap imports from the Orient"

1. \Flood\, n. [OE. flod a flowing, stream, flood, AS.
   fl[=o]d; akin to D. vloed, OS. fl[=o]d, OHG. fluot, G. flut,
   Icel. fl[=o][eth], Sw. & Dan. flod, Goth. fl[=o]dus; from the
   root of E. flow. [root]80. See {Flow}, v. i.]
   1. A great flow of water; a body of moving water; the flowing
      stream, as of a river; especially, a body of water,
      rising, swelling, and overflowing land not usually thus
      covered; a deluge; a freshet; an inundation.
   
            A covenant never to destroy The earth again by
            flood.                                --Milton.
   
   2. The flowing in of the tide; the semidiurnal swell or rise
      of water in the ocean; -- opposed to ebb; as, young flood;
      high flood.
   
            There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken
            at the flood, leads on to fortune.    --Shak.
   
   3. A great flow or stream of any fluid substance; as, a flood
      of light; a flood of lava; hence, a great quantity widely
      diffused; an overflowing; a superabundance; as, a flood of
      bank notes; a flood of paper currency.
   
   4. Menstrual disharge; menses. --Harvey.
   
   {Flood anchor} (Naut.), the anchor by which a ship is held
      while the tide is rising.
   
   {Flood fence}, a fence so secured that it will not be swept
      away by a flood.
   
   {Flood gate}, a gate for shutting out, admitting, or
      releasing, a body of water; a tide gate.
   
   {Flood mark}, the mark or line to which the tide, or a flood,
      rises; high-water mark.
   
   {Flood tide}, the rising tide; -- opposed to {ebb tide}.
   
   {The Flood}, the deluge in the days of Noah.
   
   

2. \Flood\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Flooded}; p. pr. & vb. n.
   {Flooding}.]
   1. To overflow; to inundate; to deluge; as, the swollen river
      flooded the valley.
   
   2. To cause or permit to be inundated; to fill or cover with
      water or other fluid; as, to flood arable land for
      irrigation; to fill to excess or to its full capacity; as,
      to flood a country with a depreciated currency.
   
   

On a real-time network (whether at the level of tcp/ip, or at the level of, say, irc), to send a huge amount of data to another user (or a group of users, in a channel) in an attempt to annoy him, lock his terminal, or to overflow his network buffer and thus lose his network connection.

The basic principles of flooding are that you should have better network bandwidth than the person you're trying to flood, and that what you do to flood them (e.g., generate ping requests) should be *less* resource-expensive for your machine to produce than for the victim's machine to deal with. There is also the corrolary that you should avoid being caught.

Failure to follow these principles regularly produces hilarious results, e.g., an IRC user flooding himself off the network while his intended victim is unharmed, the attacker's flood attempt being detected, and him being banned from the network in semi-perpetuity.

See also pingflood, clonebot and botwar.

[jargon file]

1. 1. Water flowing over normally dry land. Excess water in a river causes a river to overflow its banks.
   2. A high streamflow overtopping the natural or artificial banks in any reach of a stream.
   3. Any flow that exceeds the bankfull capacity of a stream or channel and flows out on the floodplain; greater than bankfull discharge.
2. Flow of a stream equalled or exceeded, on the average once in n years.

an event recorded in Gen. 7 and 8. (See DELUGE.) In Josh. 24:2, 3, 14, 15, the word "flood" (R.V., "river") means the river Euphrates. In Ps. 66:6, this word refers to the river Jordan.