Disaster Area: Water Hazard: Words for Too Much Moisture

Much of the world's best farmland is located near rivers, because of the way they distribute soil and nutrients, eroded from higher places, into flat-bottomed valleys. Alluvium means exactly this in Latin: sand and other materials deposited by floods.

Diluvium means "flood" in Latin, and it's the root of the French word deluge, seen below. The prefix ante- means "before," so antediluvian means "before the flood." While it originally referred to the time before the Biblical flood, now it most often describes something that's outdated or obsolete.

Where a cascade is a series of small waterfalls, a cataract is one high waterfall that drops straight off a cliff.

When the rain is pouring down, that's a downpour. Easy, right?

Little whirlpools that form in flowing water are called eddies. It originates in the Old English prefix id-, meaning "backwards," in the sense that the water flows back against the current before circling around.

Undare means "to flow" in Latin, and the prefix in- means "into," "on," or "over." So when a river overflows its banks, it inundates the surrounding land.

Maelstrom is the Dutch word for "whirlpool."

In Latin, torrentem means "boiling" or "rushing." So a normally picturesque stream can become a dangerous, raging torrent after a heavy rain.

Tsunami is the Japanese word for a huge wave that originates in seismic activity under or near the ocean, sometimes inaccurately called a "tidal wave." A severe undersea earthquake can cause massive amounts of water to quickly move inland, doing devastating damage.