Barney & Clyde by Gene Weingarten; Dan Weingarten & David Clark for May 18, 2023

A spate of floods.

The OED lists the first written appearance of “spate” in English as “originally Scottish and northern” but also says “Of unknown origin”. And if the OED don’t know its source, ain’t nobody do.

I’m impressed that her classmates came up with answers!

If this happens to be a vocab lesson, and spate is one of the words, the teacher should be delighted. She should be reasonably happy anyhow. Cynthia has the whole class thinking creatively.

Curt Flood was an excellent Center-Fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, but is probably more well known for his suit to fight being traded in 1969:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Flood

Of course, her initial premise was flawed. You can have a spate of donations or a spate of well-wishers.Well, not in America, land of the 50 word vocabulary.

Elmer Flood?

Floods are what made the Nile Valley (and others) arable.

And the album “Flood” by They Might Be Giants sold well.

First of all, her premise was wrong, Dictionary defines “spate” as “a large number of similar things or events appearing or occurring in quick succession.” It doesn’t say anything about them being bad things.

In spite of the definition or even the possibilities for usage, she is correct that you generally only hear spate used in negative situations.