Overwhelm

How to spell overwhelm

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overwhelm

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overwhelm mean?

1. verbTo bury or submerge someone or something completely, especially by an excess of feeling, work, or quantity that cannot be coped with.

Overwhelm in a sentence

• The sheer volume of emails can overwhelm even the most organised manager.

• Too many choices on the menu tend to overwhelm first-time diners.

Where does overwhelm come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word joins the prefix over-, meaning 'completely' or 'beyond', to the older English verb whelm, which meant to cover something over, to engulf, or to turn upside down so it sinks. Whelm itself descends from the Old English hwelfan and its Middle English form whelmen, used quite literally of water capsizing a boat or burying something beneath it. By the 1300s and 1400s the compound overwhelm had appeared, first describing physical submersion under a flood or a falling mass, and only later taking on its familiar figurative sense of being swamped by emotion, work, or numbers. The buried 'h' after the 'w' is the quiet spelling trap, a survival from the older whelm that many writers forget; remembering the standalone word whelm helps fix the -whelm ending in place. The same prefix appears in everyday relatives such as overcome and overflow, which both share that idea of being engulfed.

How the word is built

• over- (completely, beyond)
• whelm (to cover over, submerge, from Old English hwelfan)