Oceanography

On the coast, das Hochwasser is nothing to worry about. It is simply the top of the tide, it comes round twice a day, and a tide table lists it in pairs with its opposite, das Niedrigwasser. Move inland to a river and the same word means a flood: water over the banks, sandbags, a cellar full of mud. Both senses are everyday German, and nothing in the word itself tells you which one is meant. The company it keeps does. Next to die Gezeiten, der Pegel or a clock time it is the tide, and the sentence is about navigation; next to a river’s name, days of rain or an evacuation it is the disaster, and the sentence is news. English keeps « high water » for the first and reaches for « flood » for the second, so a translation has to choose where German does not.