cascade

A waterfall or series of small waterfalls.

Noun

  1. A waterfall or series of small waterfalls.
    • Now murm'ring soft, now roaring in cascade. - 1785, William Cowper, The Garden:
    • The silver brook […] pours the white cascade. - 1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spirit of Poetry:
    • In the first week of May, Sharp began his summit push. He scaled the North Col, an ice cascade riddled with gaping crevasses, and established a camp at about 25,920 feet, where tents often must be pitched at 45-degree...
  2. A stream or sequence of a thing or things occurring as if falling like a cascade.
    • 2001, Richard Restak, The Secret Life of the Brain, Joseph Henry Press The rise in serotonin levels sets off a cascade of chemical events
    • Provision was made for this cascade of units when TfL [Transport for London] exercised an option in its order for Class 710s from Bombardier for an extra 6x5-car units and 3x4-car units: these would be used on the North...
  3. A series of electrical (or other types of) components, the output of any one being connected to the input of the next.

    Coordinate Terms: daisy chain

  4. A pattern typically performed with an odd number of props, where each prop is caught by the opposite hand.
  5. A sequence of absurd short messages posted to a newsgroup by different authors, each one responding to the most recent message and quoting the entire sequence to that point (with ever-increasing indentation).
    • Don't you hate cascades? I hate cascades! - 1993, e.j.barker, “Disassociation”, in alt.slack (Usenet):
    • Spark a usenet cascade of no less than 300 replies. - 1999, anonymous author, “CYBERLIAR SCAVENGER HUNT 1999”, in alt.test (Usenet):
    • Anyway. I didn't mean to say that everyone who posts URLs is bad and wrong and should lose their breathing privileges. Just that I was getting weary of look-at-this-link posts, sort of like some people get sick of...
  6. A hairpiece for women consisting of curled locks or a bun attached to a firm base, used to create the illusion of fuller hair.
    • A cascade can be added to one or both sides of the band to work well with longer hair. - 1998, Teresa Nelson, Creative Wedding Decorations You Can Make, →ISBN, page 10:
  7. A series of reactions in which the product of one becomes a reactant in the next

Origin

From French cascade, from Italian cascata, from cascare (“to fall”), from Vulgar Latin *cāsicāre, derived from Latin cadere, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱh₂d-.

Forms

cascades

Derived

availability cascade cascadable Cascade County cascade everlasting cascade method cascade particle Cascadia cascadic cascode cytokine cascade trophic cascade reverse cascade French cascade path cascade photocascade preference cascade quantum cascade laser subcascade

Verb

  1. To fall as a waterfall or series of small waterfalls.
    • Services between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley via Falkirk High are currently suspended, following a 30-metre breach of the Union Canal that occurred on August 12 after torrential rain and thunderstorms....
  2. To arrange in a stepped series like a waterfall.
    • No matter how you tile or cascade the windows, each window's Minimize, Maximize, and Restore buttons work as usual. - 2001, Greg M Perry, Sams teach yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 hours:
  3. To occur as a causal sequence.
    • Child folders inherit the configuration of their parent folder, meaning that configuration settings cascade down through an application's virtual folder hierarchy. - 2003, Adam Freeman, Allen Jones, Programming .NET...
  4. To pass (something) down through a chain or system in a flow or series of movements.
    • Relief arrived at Cardiff Canton depot on 1 September in the shape of the first of 12 Class 170 units cascaded from Greater Anglia. - 2019 October, Rhodri Clark, “TfW seeks PRM derogation for Class 37 sets”, in Modern...
    • The railways have long cascaded stock from flagship routes to less prestigious services, and then eventually the backwaters of the network. In the past, they may even have passed into storage, ready to be dispatched to...
  5. To vomit.
    • Then he began to choke. The next thing I knew, he cascaded onto my new carpet. - 2011, Amanda Quick, With This Ring:

Forms

cascades cascading cascaded