floodtime

• flood-time
• flood time

floodtime (plural floodtimes)

1. A time (often an annual season) during which an area is flooded; the season when a river floods its banks.
   • 1922, Flora Annie Steel, “Nix Naught Nothing” in English Fairy Tales, Macmillan, p. 180,

     Now, on the way, he came to a big, rushing river, which neither he nor his army could cross, for it was flood-time and the water was full of dangerous whirlpools, where nixies and water wraiths lived, always ready to drown men.

   • 1944, Zane Grey, The Wilderness Trek, Chapter 28

     In good seasons the stream must have been a fair little river, and during flood time it had spread all over the flat.

   • 1953, James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Knopf, Part Two,

     The storm that raged in him to-night could not uproot this hatred, the mightiest tree in all John’s country, all that remained to-night, in this, John’s floodtime.

   • 1959, Theodora Kroeber, The Inland Whale, University of California Press, p. 194,

     Each year, the river brought its deposit of rich, red silt at floodtime. When the flood receded, the Mohave planted his corn, his squash and beans.