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overwhelmed

adjectiveverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌəʊvəˈwɛlmd//
  • United Kingdom//ˌəʊvəˈʍɛlmd//
  • United States//ˌoʊvɚˈwɛlmd//
  • United States//ˌoʊvɚˈʍɛlmd//

Emotionally overpowered.

adjective

  1. 1

    Emotionally overpowered.

    completely overwhelmed

    emotionally overwhelmed

    She was overwhelmed with gratitude.

  2. 2

    Emotionally overpowered. Carrying a metaphorical burden greater than one can comfortably handle.

    He felt overwhelmed by the workload.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úp Proto-Indo-European *-er Proto-Indo-European *upér Proto-Germanic *uber Old English ofer- Middle English over- Proto-Indo-European *kʷelp-der. Proto-Germanic *kʷolpós Proto-Germanic *hwalbazder.? Proto-Indo-European *kʷelp-der. Proto-Germanic *kʷólpo- Proto-Germanic *hwalbąder.? Old English hwealf Old English *hwealfnian Old English *hwealmnian? Middle English whelmen Middle English overwhelmen English overwhelm Old English -ed Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Germanic *-ōdaz Old English -od Middle English -ed English -ed English overwhelmed From overwhelm + -ed.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of overwhelmsimple past and past participle of overwhelm

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úp Proto-Indo-European *-er Proto-Indo-European *upér Proto-Germanic *uber Old English ofer- Middle English over- Proto-Indo-European *kʷelp-der. Proto-Germanic *kʷolpós Proto-Germanic *hwalbazder.? Proto-Indo-European *kʷelp-der. Proto-Germanic *kʷólpo- Proto-Germanic *hwalbąder.? Old English hwealf Old English *hwealfnian Old English *hwealmnian? Middle English whelmen Middle English overwhelmen English overwhelm Proto-Germanic *-ōd- Old English -ode Middle English -ede English -ed English overwhelmed From overwhelm + -ed.

Forms

comparative
more overwhelmed
superlative
most overwhelmed
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).