barrage

Other forms: barrages; barraged; barraging

A barrage is something that comes quickly and heavily — as an attack of bullets or artillery, or a fast spray of words.

Sometimes in movies or news footage, the audience gets a glimpse from behind a mounted weapon and sees a heavy rain of bombs or bullets — called a barrage — going toward a target, sending as much POW! as possible to hit a wide area. Words become a barrage when spoken or written in uncontrollable anger or with overflowing emotion: "Her human-rights speech was a barrage of passion. It was hard to keep up with, but we felt the intensity of her cause."

Definitions of barrage

1. noun

   the heavy fire of artillery to saturate an area rather than hit a specific target
   “they laid down a barrage in front of the advancing troops”

   synonyms: barrage fire, battery, bombardment, shelling

   type of:

   fire, firing

   the act of firing weapons or artillery at an enemy
2. noun

   the rapid and continuous delivery of linguistic communication (spoken or written)
   “a barrage of questions”

   synonyms: bombardment, onslaught, outpouring

   type of:

   language, linguistic communication

   a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols
3. noun

   an overwhelming number or amount
   synonyms: deluge, flood, flurry, inundation, torrent

   type of:

   batch, deal, flock, good deal, great deal, hatful, heap, lot, mass, mess, mickle, mint, mountain, muckle, passel, peck, pile, plenty, pot, quite a little, raft, sight, slew, spate, stack, tidy sum, wad

   (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent
4. verb

   address continuously or persistently, as if with a barrage
   “The speaker was barraged by an angry audience”

   synonyms: bombard

   type of:

   assail, assault, attack, lash out, round, snipe

   attack in speech or writing