Today's vocabulary discovery

Inundate apparently is a generic term in English for being overwhelmed by specific things with the implication that one must then deal with those things.

Flood is specific to water.

So "flooded with requests" is metaphorical, "inundated with requests" is not -- EXCEPT "inundate" comes from the Latin for flooding, so, i suppose it was originally a metaphor.

ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin inundat- ‘flooded,’ from the verb inundare, from in- ‘into, upon’ + undare ‘to flow’ (from unda ‘a wave’ ).