the.com/landslide
gravity finally cashing the check the mountain wrote in slow motion
means A sudden collapse of rock, soil, or debris sliding down a slope — or, by extension, an overwhelming victory in which one side wins by a crushing margin.
from A plain compound of 'land' and 'slide,' English doing what it does best: bolting two ordinary words together to name a thing exactly. The literal geological sense came first; the landslip of earth was an old worry long before it described elections. The political meaning — a victory so lopsided the votes seem to pour downhill in one direction — is a 19th-century American figurative leap, the image of unstoppable mass put to work on the ballot box.
- top speed
- debris flows can hit 100 mph downhill
- trigger
- earthquakes, rain, or a single careless slope cut
- ancient record
- a Wyoming slide moved a billion tons of rock
- underwater too
- submarine slides spawn tsunamis from the deep
- word steal
- borrowed by elections for crushing victories
vajont dam disaster — 1963 italy: 260 million cubic meters of rock collapsed into reservoir, killing 2,000 people
usoi landslide dam — 1911 tajikistan: magnitude 7.4 earthquake triggered slide that created world's highest natural dam at 567 meters
frank slide — 1903 alberta canada: 110 million tons of limestone fell in 100 seconds, killing 76 miners