overwhelm
verb
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Let’s face it: life can get overwhelming. A person might be overwhelmed by a sensory experience or emotion; a city might be overwhelmed by an influx of tourists. Things can underwhelm, too: a bland meal, a bare wall, a lackluster playlist. But how often does an experience just, well, whelm you? The answer, unassumingly, is just as often as one overwhelms you—the two verbs are in fact largely synonymous. Both come from Middle English whelmen, meaning "to overturn," and overwhelm has always been more popular, perhaps because the emphatic redundancy of overwhelm makes it seem more apt for describing reactions to powerful forces or feelings.
Examples of overwhelm in a Sentence
Reid J. Epstein, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2025
But public transit and pedestrian advocates might point to these numbers as evidence that some cities are overwhelmed by cars and need to get serious about alternatives.
—Alex Fitzpatrick, Axios, 25 Feb. 2025
Summarization involves condensing key points from past interactions into concise formats, ensuring the LLM has access to essential information without being overwhelmed by excessive data.
—Sandeep Jha, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2025
China could easily find and destroy big assets, and its much larger military force would overwhelm any of these systems that survive an initial attack, leaving Taiwan without offensive firepower or sufficient defenses.
—Jennifer Kavanagh, Foreign Affairs, 25 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Overwhelm.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overwhelm. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025.
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overwhelm
verb
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