to flood chat
- phrasal verb
- Jargon
- During the live stream, viewers began to flood chat with comments, making it hard for anyone to follow the discussion.
Examples
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The moderator warned users not to flood chat or they would be muted.
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Please don't flood chat with repeated questions during the meeting.
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After the announcement, excited fans began to flood chat with emojis and gifs.
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Don't flood chat with irrelevant messages!
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They always flood chat during meetings.
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If you flood chat with too many messages, no one will be able to keep up with the conversation.
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The teacher asked the students not to flood chat with off-topic messages while they were discussing the assignment.
Synonyms
To give someone many questions or messages quickly
To give someone many questions or requests at the same time
To give someone so much work or so many requests that they cannot cope
Antonyms
How Disruptive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to overwhelm a chat by sending excessive messages' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'flood' (an excessive influx) with 'chat' (a conversation or messaging space). This metaphorical but regular extension ('to flood' = inundate) is common in online contexts and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Flood chat comes from the image of fast water overflowing a room: a flood fills and hides everything. So when people flood a chat, their many messages fill the conversation and 'overwhelm' it, making it hard for others to read or join.