whelm

From Middle English whelmen (“to turn over, capsize; to invert, turn upside down”),^[1] perhaps from Old English *hwealmnian, a variant of *hwealfnian, from hwealf (“arched, concave, vaulted; an arched or vaulted ceiling”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwalb, from Proto-Germanic *hwalbą (“arch, vault”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷelp- (“to curve”). The English word is cognate with German Walm (“a vaulted roof”), Icelandic hvolf (“vaulted ceiling”), Dutch welven (“to arch”), German wölben (“to bend, curve; to arch”), Icelandic hvelfa (“to overturn”), Old Saxon bihwelvian (“to cover; to hide”), Ancient Greek κόλπος (kólpos, “bosom, hollow, gulf”).

The noun is derived from the verb.^[2]

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: whĕlm, wĕlm, IPA^(key): /ʍɛlm/, /wɛlm/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛlm

whelm (third-person singular simple present whelms, present participle whelming, simple past and past participle whelmed)

1. (transitive, archaic) To bury, to cover; to engulf, to submerge.

   Synonyms: overwhelm, (Britain dialectal, Scotland) whemmel

   Antonym: unwhelm

   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 46, column 1:

     Giue fire: ſhe is my prize, or Ocean whelme them all.

   • , [John] Gay, “Book II. Of Walking the Streets by Day.”, in Trivia: Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London, London: Bernard Lintott, , →OCLC, page 46:

     Still let me walk; for oft' the ſudden Gale / Ruffles the Tide, and ſhifts the dang'rous Sail, / Then ſhall the Paſſenger, too late, deplore / The whelming Billow, and the faithleſs Oar; [...]

   • 1786, Robert Burns, “To a Mountain-daisy, On Turning One Down, with the Plough, in April—1786”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, volume I, Kilmarnock, Scotland: John Wilson, →OCLC; reprinted Kilmarnock, Scotland: James M‘Kie, 1867, →OCLC, page 172:

     Such is the fate of ſimple Bard, / On Life's rough ocean luckleſs ſtarr'd! / Unſkilful he to note the card / Of prudent Lore, / Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, / And whelm him o'er!

   • 1803, Erasmus Darwin, “Canto I. Production of Life.”, in The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes, London: Printed for J Johnson, , by T Bensley, , →OCLC, section II, page 11, lines 113–116:

     Deep-whelm'd beneath, in vast sepulchral caves, / Oblivion dwells amid unlabell'd graves; / The storied tomb, the laurell'd bust o'erturns, / And shakes their ashes from the mould'ring urns.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 37, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 185:

     The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

2. (transitive, obsolete) To throw (something) over a thing so as to cover it.

   Synonym: (Britain dialectal, Scotland) whemmel

   • 1708, J Mortimer, “Of Kites, Hawks, &c.”, in The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. , 2nd corrected edition, London: Printed by J. H. for H. Mortlock , and J. Robinson , →OCLC, book VII, pages 252–253:

     Gnats and Flies are very troubleſome in Houſes [...] Balls made of Horſe-dung and laid in a Room will do the ſame [attract gnats and flies] if they are new made; by which means you may whelm ſome things over them and keep them there.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To ruin or destroy.
   • 1877, Henry M[artyn] Field, “Naples.—Pompeii and Pæstum.”, in From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn, 4th edition, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, Armstrong, and Company, →OCLC, page 281:

     Here, where a Cæsar stood two thousand years ago, the traveller from another continent (though not from New Zealand) stands to-day, to muse—at Pæstum, as at Pompeii—on the fate which overtakes all human things, and at last whelms man and his works in one undistinguishable ruin.

   • 1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: Elkin Mathews, , →OCLC, page 68:

     In the twentieth night of the nine hundredth moon, as night came up the valley, I performed the mystic rites of each of the gods in the temple as is my wont, lest any of the gods should grow angry in the night and whelm us while we slept.

4. (intransitive, archaic) To overcome with emotion; to overwhelm.
   • 1839, [John Henry Newman], , “Hymn 71”, in A Selection of Psalms and Hymns as Chaunted and Sung in the Parish Church of Lyme Regis, Dorset, Lyme , Dorset: Printed, published, and sold only by Daniel Dunster, , →OCLC, page 175:

     Hear Thou our plaint, when light is gone / And lawlessness and strife prevail. / Hear, lest the whelming weight of crime / Wreck us with life in view; / Lest thoughts and schemes of sense and time / Earn us a sinner's due.

Today, the verb overwhelm is much more common than whelm.

whelm (plural whelms)

1. (poetic, also figuratively) A surge of water.

   the whelm of the tide

   • 2004, Clark Coolidge, chapter XIII, in Mine: The One that Enters the Stories, Great Barrington, Mass.: The Figures, →ISBN, page 75:

     I wonder about things and the people between us. The currents, the feedback, and the whelms. The sharp cracks between trees, and the tolling between the knees.

   • 2006, Seamus Heaney, District and Circle, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 19:

     [...] I stood waiting, glad of a first tremor / Then caught up in the now-or-never whelm / Of one and all the full length of the train.

   • 2012, Richard Secklin, “Introduction”, in Marijuana for Parkinson’s Disease: Cannabis Research & the Miracle Plant for Parkinson’s, : Nettfit Publishing, →ISBN:

     As our country developed, the clash of new immigrating cultures were all positioning themselves throughout the United States and their political leaders were individually striving for their own egotistical whelm of power [...]

2. A wooden drainpipe, a hollowed out tree trunk, turned with the cavity downwards to form an arched watercourse.
   • 2023, Christopher Hadley, The Road, William Collins Books, →ISBN:

     A whelm was a wooden drainpipe, a hollowed-out tree trunk, "whelmed down" or turned with the concavity downwards to form an arched watercourse.