Wiktionary

torrent

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Borrowed from French torrent, from Italian torrente, from Latin torrentem, accusative of torrēns (“burning, seething, roaring”), from Latin torrēre (“to parch, scorch”).

Noun

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torrent (plural torrents)

  1. A violent flow, as of water, lava, etc.; a stream suddenly raised and running rapidly, as down a precipice.
    Rain fell on the hills in torrents.
    A torrent of green and white water broke over the hull of the sail-boat.
    • 1841 September 28, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[Miscellaneous.] Excelsior.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 4, page 130:
      "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; / "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, / The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" / And loud that clarion voice replied / Excelsior!
    • 2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28:
      Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. […] Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.
  2. (figuratively) A large amount or stream of something.
    They endured a torrent of inquiries.
    • 1906 August, Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”, in Poems, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 1, stanza I, page 45:
      The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, / The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, / The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, / And the highwayman came riding— / Riding—riding— / The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
    • 1907, E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey, Part III, XXXI [Uniform ed., p. 278]:
      On the banks of the grey torrent of life, love is the only flower.
    • 1981 December 5, Michael Bronski, “Coming (Out) to Opera”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 20, page 6:
      Western civilization has always taught the repression of emotion […] The emotional torrents of opera rebel against this.
    • 2011 December 21, Helen Pidd, “Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis”, in the Guardian:
      A new stream of migrants is leaving the continent. It threatens to become a torrent if the debt crisis continues to worsen.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Adjective

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torrent (comparative more torrent, superlative most torrent)

  1. Rolling or rushing in a rapid stream.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      Waves of torrent fire.

See also

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Etymology 2

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From BitTorrent and the file extension it uses for metadata (.torrent); ultimately from etymology 1, carrying the notion of the flow of information.

Noun

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torrent (plural torrents)

  1. (Internet, file sharing) A set of files obtainable through a peer-to-peer network, especially BitTorrent.
    I got a torrent of the complete works of Shakespeare the other day; I'm not sure why.
Translations
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Verb

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torrent (third-person singular simple present torrents, present participle torrenting, simple past and past participle torrented)

  1. (Internet slang, transitive) To download in a torrent.
    The video rental place didn't have the film I was after, but I managed to torrent it.
    • 2009, Rick Dakan, Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues, page 38:
      They had two thousand CDs burned with Listnin loaded on them, including versions for every major phone OS, and they'd set up a dozen servers in seven different countries for people to torrent the file from.
Derived terms
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Catalan

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin torrentem.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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torrent m (plural torrents)

  1. torrent

Derived terms

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Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Italian torrente, from Latin torrentem.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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torrent m (plural torrents)

  1. a torrent

Descendants

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  • → English: torrent
  • → Romanian: torent

Further reading

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Latin

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Verb

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torrent

  1. third-person plural present active indicative of torreō

Welsh

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Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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torrent

  1. (literary) third-person plural imperfect/conditional of torri
  2. (literary) third-person plural imperative of torri

Mutation

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Welsh mutation
radical soft nasal aspirate
torrent dorrent nhorrent thorrent
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.
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