Tony Cooper
On 28 Mar 2014 19:14:47 GMT, Sandman <mr@sandman.net>wrote:

For example, there was an onslaught of objections to Miley Cyrus's "twerking" performance. When it's a description of a large number of positive responses, we're more likely to say something like "a flood of supporting tweets".

Sandman
A flood is equally usually meant to describe something negative. Maybe you mean words like "abundance", "plethora", "excess" or "surplus" just to mention a few words that are synonyms but with a more positive or at least neutral connotation.

Tony Cooper
Except that "flood" *isn't* "equally usually" meant to describe something negative. A flood itself is a natural disaster and a negative thing. However, we use "flood" in a positive way most of the time when we use it as a descriptive term.

We see "a flood of responses to an ad", "a flood of expressions of goodwill", and "a flood of support".

It does seem at cross-purposes to use a word that has one meaning as disaster to be also used to mean an outpouring of a good thing, but that's the way the language works.

Calling other words "synonyms" is tricky. Some of your examples are synonymous only in certain circumstances. Substituting "abundance" for "flood" in the sentence "There was a flood of orders for the new product" does work. You would not use "excess" or "surplus" as a replacement, though, unless the circumstances were such that the supplier was having trouble satisfying the demand.

"Plethora" is even trickier. While it means a large amount, it's just not idiomatic to use it as a synonym for "flood". You could use it, and defend the use based on the definition, but it would be considered as not-quite-right. It's usually used for more abstract things than "orders". We can see a plethora of ideas, or a plethora of suggestions, but not a plethora of orders. However, we can be flooded with a plethora of suggestions. It's redundant, but it's seen.

When you see a dictionary entry for synonyms of a word, the list should only be a starting point. The list is not intended to mean that you can plug in all of the words in that list for the word you looked up. You have to determine if each word conveys the meaning for the circumstances.