torrent - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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

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 (date written), 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.

violent flow, as of water etc.

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.

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

  1. To fall or flow in a torrent; to pour.
    • 2016 January 28, Anna Pavord, Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 63:
      ... through the inflexible rain, each turn in the track revealed a new cascade, torrenting down the steep cliff of the hill. The weather was too wild for me to get to them. In good weather, they wouldn't exist.
    • 2024 November 11, Peter D. Thompson, The Connection, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN:
      Outside[,] rain was torrenting down, lightning and thunder heralded the arrival of a summer storm.

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

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.

file transfers

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.

Borrowed from Latin torrentem.

torrent m (plural torrents)

  1. torrent

Borrowed from Italian torrente, from Latin torrentem.

torrent m (plural torrents)

  1. a torrent

torrent

  1. third-person plural present active indicative of torreō

torrent

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