Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A flow to or toward an area, especially of blood or other fluid toward a body part.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of flowing to; a flow or flowing to; an accession: as, an afflux of blood to the head.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A flowing towards; that which flows to.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an upward rush of fluid
  • noun hydrology The rise in water level (above normal) on the upstream side of a bridge or obstruction caused when the effective flow area at the obstruction is less than the natural width of the stream immediately upstream of the obstruction.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Latin affluxus, from Latin, past participle of affluere, to flow to; see affluent.]

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Examples

  • There is a huge afflux of new information in human genetics and epigenetics.

    Academia, Harvard Law School, and freedom of speech 2010

  • And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must lie still where chance has once placed it, and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it?

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

  • When you have carried the bandage twice or thrice round at the seat of the fracture, it is to be carried upward, so that the afflux of blood into it may be stopped, and the bandage should terminate there, and the first bandages ought not to be long.

    On Fractures 2007

  • In the latter instances, all afflux of nutriment and heat being prevented by the ligature, we see the testes and large fleshy tumours dwindle, die, and finally fall off.

    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals 2005

  • Second, that the afflux proceeds from the heart, and through the heart by a course from the great veins; for it gets into the parts below the ligature through the arteries, not through the veins; and the arteries nowhere receive blood from the veins, nowhere receive blood save and except from the left ventricle of the heart.

    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals 2005

  • And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must lie still where chance has once placed it, and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it?

    God, Aids & Circumcision Hill, George 2005

  • And then, wherefore is there neither swelling nor repletion of the veins, nor any sign or symptom of attraction or afflux, above the ligature?

    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals 2005

  • Besides, the ligature is competent to occasion the afflux in question without either pain, or heat, or a vacuum.

    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals 2005

  • He felt within him sources of suffering so numerous, diverse, and complicated, such an afflux of miseries, such inevitable tortures, he felt so lost, so far overwhelmed, from this moment, by a wave of unimaginable agony that he could not suppose anyone ever had suffered as he did.

    Strong as Death 2003

  • Well! there are a certain number of organs which are vitiated by their lack, by their constitution, others which are vitiated by an excess of afflux.

    Balzac 2003

Comments

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  • Flowing towards or together. (Luciferous Logolepsy)

    May 16, 2008