open the floodgates
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To unleash or trigger a large amount of something
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
phát động hoặc kích hoạt một lượng lớn điều gì đó
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to open gates that hold back floodwater
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The score that opened the floodgates came out of nothing after 62 minutes.
The discussion with trainees may reveal that they fear that they will open emotional floodgates for Sally since so many of her problems may not have immediate solutions.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “open the floodgates” mean?
To unleash or trigger a large amount of something Literally: to open gates that hold back floodwater
Is “open the floodgates” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.