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As a member of Charcoal HQ, I get to see a lot of strange messages from across the entire Stack Exchange network. Today, this 'answer' was posted on our sister site Русский язык:

флуд_________________________________________

The same thing was posted three days ago here, (probably) by another user, so apparently it means something. Google Translate says "flood", but I have yet to see somebody post an English message with just the word "flood" in it.

Both answers were deleted rather quickly, which suggests me they were probably posted by trolls.

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    No, it's stressed флУдить. Though, I'm not sure I ever heard it spoken, only written on forums. Thus, there's no official way to stress it. Me and shabunc stress it differently. – GrayFace Jun 26 '17 at 22:32
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    Флуд — Short article in Russian: "Флуд (искаж. англ. flood (читается-таки флад) — наводнение, потоп) — размещение большого количества однородной информации или бесполезных символов, ..., одной повторяющейся фразы или одинаковых графических файлов..." – Eugene Jun 27 '17 at 5:17
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    The spelling is interesting. The oo has been rendered according to the general phonetic rule (manifest in words such as "school", "tool", "pool", and "zoo"). The actual English pronunciation is difficult to represent in Russian. The best I can come up with is "флаэд". – David42 Jun 27 '17 at 13:12
  • @DavidC well, actually there are quite a lot of frequently used word that does not follow that pattern - door, blood, floor. – shabunc♦ Jun 27 '17 at 14:11
  • "I have yet to see somebody post an English message with just the word flood in it" - try volunteering to be a mod. – Dmitry Grigoryev Jun 27 '17 at 14:53
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It's an example of a word which belongs to a quite interesting class of words – words of English origin which are used in a completely different way in non-English languages – or just forgotten.

This is actually derived from English "flood" and it is a slang word which initially meant a specific form of DDoS attack – in Russian it evolved for describing any kind of huge chunks of user generated content – basically off-topic. Something like flame, but not necessarily even debatable.

There's also a quite popular verb флуди́ть which is, well, to flood :)

UPD: it turns out a lot of people pronounce it like флу́дить, stressing the first syllable. Personally me happened to hear only the first form but I easily can accept that this word is pronounced this way or another.

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  • Thanks - enough reason to flag those posts as abusive, then. – Glorfindel Jun 26 '17 at 21:04
  • Please, on which syllable is флудить stressed? – OmarL Jun 26 '17 at 21:08
  • @Wilson - added stress. – shabunc♦ Jun 26 '17 at 21:09
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    any kind of huge chunks of user generated content this is not true. It means any chuck, usually a message, even the tiniest one, if it was about something unrelated to the topic of a discussion. I cannot say that this is universally true, but this is how it is understood by some people at least – Dmitry Koroliov Jun 27 '17 at 16:07
  • @user907860 - that's just off-topic, flood is subtly different – shabunc♦ Jun 27 '17 at 16:08
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I'm a native Russian speaker.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear "флуд" is the meaning of "idle, meaningless talk". The concept is similar to "flaming", but it's milder, does not necessarily imply bad intentions (perhaps the person doing it simply likes to talk a lot) and can be used humorously to denote any kind of prolonged Internet banter. Likewise, "флу́дер" is online slang for "chatterbox", a person who writes many messages without bringing any value to the the conversation.

While the term may have originated from the name of a DDoS attack, that is not the first meaning that comes to mind when people hear that word and not many are even aware of it.

The word on its own is NOT abusive or offensive and I would strongly suggest to exercise extreme caution banning people merely for using it.

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    Also флуди́лка is section on the forum, specifically reserved for messages not on the forum topic, for conversations on arbitrary topics. – Eugene Jun 27 '17 at 9:08
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    IMO posting a single word with no relation to the question as an answer is plenty abusive. – Dmitry Grigoryev Jun 27 '17 at 14:49
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It's a term used mainly on internet forums.
It is used as alternative to the words spam, off-topic, flame.

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    it differs from spam, off-topic and flame nevertheless - so basically you answer sounds like - well, it's a word. – shabunc♦ Jun 27 '17 at 9:08
  • Practically, it is used just for that. – Alex Weitz Jun 27 '17 at 9:12
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    It is misused for that, but that's another story – user3125367 Jun 27 '17 at 9:52

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