To dwell on something is to keep thinking about it long past the point of usefulness. Turning it over, and over.
It is almost always a criticism or a warning, since telling somebody not to dwell on a mistake is advice to stop. It takes a direct object after on. There is a milder use about speech, since dwelling on a point means spending too long on it. The old sense of dwell meaning to live somewhere survives in dwelling, which is what planners call a house.
1phrasedwell onTo think or talk about something for too long.
“There is no point trying to dwell on what went wrong.”
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Thinking & Memory
First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.
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