firehosing style
- noun
- /ˈfaɪərˌhoʊzɪŋ staɪl/
- Literature
:
estilo de inundación
- The politician's firehosing style during the press conference made it hard to separate facts from exaggeration.
Examples
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In online debates, a firehosing style can overwhelm opponents and derail meaningful discussion.
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Her manager's firehosing style left the team overloaded with information and unsure of priorities.
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Don't use a firehosing style!
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The politician used a firehosing style to avoid answering questions.
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In online debates, a firehosing style can overwhelm opponents and derail meaningful discussion.
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Her manager's firehosing style left the team overloaded with information and unsure of priorities.
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The politician's firehosing style during the press conference made it hard to separate facts from exaggeration.
Synonyms
1
6.1
A very large fast flow of questions or messages that is hard to handle
Antonyms
How Overwhelming
- Informal
- Literature
435
3.5
368
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
firehosing + style
The headword 'style' is transparent, but 'firehosing' is a novel, metaphorical formation based on 'firehose' (an overwhelming, high-volume flow) and is not a standard lexical item learners typically know. A B1 learner who knows 'fire' and 'hose' might partly infer the sense (bombarding with a torrent of information) but would likely need cultural or contextual exposure to be confident, so the expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Firehosing style comes from the image of a strong firehose that sprays a huge amount of water everywhere at once. Like that spray, this style floods people with so much information that it's hard to know what is true. That's why it means 'to overwhelm' an audience with many messages to confuse or control them.