noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An inundation of water.

Verb

1. 1
   To pump water into the ground around an oil well nearing depletion in order to loosen and force out additional oil.

   "We will waterflood the well in order to obtain the remaining oil."

Synonyms

All synonyms

cataractdelugefloodfreshniagarapour

Example

More examples

"We will waterflood the well in order to obtain the remaining oil."

Etymology

From Middle English waterrflod, from Old English wæterflōd, equivalent to water + flood.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.