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Glite Dictionary
🐄 A wild rush 🏃 To rush wildly 💻 A traffic surge
stampede

stampede

2 7.9
A sudden large number of visits to a website that makes it too busy to work
  • noun
  • /stæmˈpiːd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : avalancha
  • The sudden promotional offer led to a stampede of users trying to access the service simultaneously.

Examples

  • Right after the election, the overwhelming stampede is in the direction of the momentum from the election, which is motivated by continuing to pound on the GOP.

    Blog text (12)

  • Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), of course, delivered an iPhone 3.0 OS sneak peek to the press, which led to a stampede of blog activity.

    Blog text (15)

  • Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signaling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

    Blog text (16)

  • The website experienced a major stampede of requests after the new feature was announced.

  • During the sale, a stampede of customers overwhelmed the online store, crashing the site.

Synonyms

flood
vsstampede
75 2.4

A very large number of things that arrive suddenly

is coordinated requests hitting a backend at once causing a bottleneck
avalanche
vsstampede
36 5.1

A sudden large number of messages or requests that arrive at once

is a synchronized burst aimed at a system causing overload
inundation
vsstampede
1 7.2

A very large number of things that arrive at the same time

is instead a synchronized surge focused on a service or resource
flood of visitors
vsstampede
2.9

A large number of people who arrive at one place quickly

is about coordinated simultaneous requests to a system rather than people arriving

How Overwhelming

collapse
350 4.1
stampede
  • Specialized
2 7.9
flood
75 2.4
surge
132 4.2

Surface Forms

stampede singular
stampedes plural

Morphology

stampede = stamp (semi-transparent) = stamp + ede

The computing sense is a metaphorical extension of the physical 'stamp'/'stampede' sense; learners who know the physical sense can usually infer the computing meaning, but the morphological formation itself is not a regular English pattern.

Etymology

The word stampede comes from Spanish estampar 'to stamp' and the familiar English stamp. In computing a stampede is like a herd all running at once — a sudden rush of requests that overwhelms a service.