floodgate
Noun: 1. A valve or gate used to control water flow: A physical device, typically part of a sluice or dam, designed to regulate or stop the flow of water. 2. Something that controls or restrains a large outpouring: A figurative restraint that holds back a powerful force, such as emotions, people, or events. When this restraint is removed, it often leads to a sudden, uncontrolled release.
- Literal Meaning (Water Control):
- The engineers opened the floodgate to release pressure from the swollen reservoir.
- A malfunction in the main floodgate caused the canal to overflow.
- Figurative Meaning (Restraint):
- The new law was seen as a floodgate against corporate fraud.
- The court's ruling lifted a floodgate, allowing numerous similar lawsuits to proceed.
The word is most commonly used in the plural form "floodgates" within the figurative idiom "open the floodgates" or "floodgates open". * "to open the floodgates": To remove a restraint, allowing something previously held back to be released suddenly and in large quantities. * The policy change opened the floodgates for new investment in the sector. * Her emotional confession opened the floodgates, and she couldn't stop crying. * "the floodgates open": Describes the moment this release begins. * When the celebrity endorsed the product, the floodgates opened and sales skyrocketed.
- Sluicegate (noun): A synonym for the literal water-control gate.
- Valve (noun): A device for controlling the flow of a fluid.
- Restraint (noun): A means of controlling or limiting something.
- Barrier: Something that blocks or hinders passage.
- Dam (figurative): Something that holds back a flow.
- Control: The power to influence or direct.
- Check: A stopping or slowing of progress.
- Open the floodgates: As detailed in 'Advanced Usage', this is the primary idiom.
- Hold back the tide: To try to prevent something powerful and inevitable (similar in figurative use to keeping floodgates closed).
- regulator consisting of a valve or gate that controls the rate of water flow through a sluice
- something that restrains a flood or outpouring
- suspension of surveillance opened the floodgates to illegal immigrants