overswell

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

over- +‎ swell

Pronunciation

Verb

overswell (third-person singular simple present overswells, present participle overswelling, simple past and past participle overswelled)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To swell or rise above (something, especially the rim of a container, the sides of something hollow, etc.).
    Synonyms: overflow, spill over
    In some years the river overswells its banks, causing widespread flooding.
    • 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!
    • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      Fill, Lucius, till the wine o’erswell the cup;
    • 1636, Thomas Heywood, Loves Maistresse‎, London: John Crowch, act I, scene 1:
      Come, you have made mee resolute and bould,
      And now receive your lapps ore-swell’d with gold.
    • 1768, Ignatius Sancho, letter to Mr. M—, in Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, London: J. Nichols, 3rd edition, 1784, p. 13,
      the heart gratefully throbbing—overswelled with thankful sensations—
    • 1835, John Clare, “Decay”, in The Rural Muse‎, London: Whittaker, page 60:
      When mushrooms they were fairy bowers,
      Their marble pillars over-swelling,
    • 1942, G. L. Steer, chapter 2, in Sealed and Delivered,‎, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 14:
      […] then Badoglio and his staff [went by] looking rather big for their cars, like the necks of bookmakers overswelling their collars;
  2. (transitive, intransitive) To cause (something) to be too swollen or large; to become too swollen or large.
    • 1729, Jonathan Swift, “Maxims Controlled in Ireland”, in The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift‎, volume 15, London: W. Johnston, published 1765, page 243:
      […] the rents of lands still grew higher upon every lease that expired, till they have arrived at the present exorbitance; when the frog, overswelling himself, burst at last.
    • 1885, Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, The Burton Club, Volume 1, Translator’s Foreward, p. xvi,
      My annotations avoid only one subject, parallels of European folk-lore and fabliaux which, however interesting, would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is anthropology.
    • 1923, “Proceedings of the World’s Dairy Congress”, in Session‎, volume 1, 7, p. 289:
      A frequent difficulty in the manufacture of Emmental cheese in America, and perhaps elsewhere, is a tendency for the cheese to overswell.
    • 1998, Pamela Norris, chapter 10, in Eve: A Biography‎, New York: New York University Press, page 322:
      [The monster’s] ungrateful progeny rush to gorge on her blood, but it overswells their bellies and they literally burst to death.

See also

Noun

overswell (plural overswells)

  1. An excessive or sudden increase or flood (of something).
    Synonym: surge
    • 1978, Constance Backhouse, Leah Cohen, chapter 3, in The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women‎, Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, page 54:
      [The trial] drew a crowd […] that almost stormed the City Hall corridors. Three policement were needed to keep back the overswell.
    • 1983, Kenneth A. McClane, “From a Silent Center” in A Tree Beyond Telling, San Francisco: Black Scholar Press, p. 31,
      when no Jihad / opens the conceived / to distention, the reedy creek / to overswells / of mudwallow:
    • 1997, David Njoku, Eve‎, Lagos: True Tales Publication, page 53:
      I could feel that my overswell of emotions had communicated itself to him.

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