overpowering

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,776 of 15,258neutral

Overpowering means so strong that it drowns out everything else. A smell, a taste, a feeling that leaves no room for any other.

Smells and flavours are its natural home, since an overpowering smell of bleach is one you cannot get past. It also suits emotion, and an overpowering urge is one nobody could resist. Applied to a person it means dominating, so an overpowering personality leaves no space for anyone else. The verb overpower means to defeat by strength, and overwhelming is the near synonym for the figurative uses.

Definitions of overpowering

1adjectiveoverpoweringSo strong that nothing else can be noticed.B2+
“There was an overpowering smell of petrol.”

Where it comes from

overpower comes from over- + power.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Smell & Taste

First appears in chapter 27 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

overpowering in the wild

The spices are added lightly, to avoid overpowering the flavour of the walnuts.
Nocino
A sometime traveling companion and fellow musician, Johnny Shines, recalled that Johnson's performance of the song could be overpowering: One time in St.
Come On in My Kitchen
Easkey, one of the traditional strongholds of Sligo football, claimed their fifth title, after a gap of 25 years, when overpowering the challenge of Ballymote in the final.
1966 Sligo Senior Football Championship
Colorino was planted and used to add darker colours and structure from phenolic compounds in the grape's thick skin without the overpowering aromatics that Cabernet Sauvignon could add.
Colorino
According to music critic Robert Wilonsky, their music was at once both "overpowering" and "beautiful".
Rubberbullet

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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