overwhelmed

UK/ˌəʊvəˈwɛlmd/US/ˌoʊvɚˈwɛlmd/

adjectiveB23 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,168 of 15,258neutral

Overwhelmed is how you feel when more is coming at you than you can handle. You open the inbox after a week away, four hundred messages, and you just sit there looking at it.

Feelings overwhelm as easily as work does: overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed by kindness, overwhelmed with gratitude. It takes BY or WITH, never from. The verb behind it, overwhelm, also means to beat something by sheer force or number — the defenders were overwhelmed before dawn. Keep the two forms apart: the news was overwhelming, and you were overwhelmed by it. An overwhelming majority, though, is simply a huge one, with no feeling in it at all.

Definitions of overwhelmed

1adjectiveoverwhelmedUnable to cope because there is more work, pressure or emotion than you can manage.B2~35%
“By Thursday she was overwhelmed and stopped answering the phone.”
2adjectivefloodedFlooded by one strong feeling.B2~18%
“He was overwhelmed with relief when the results came through.”
3verbpastPast form of overwhelm: defeated or buried completely by force or by sheer number.B2~47%
“The small garrison was overwhelmed in under an hour.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Old English
ofer-
Middle English
overwhelmen
English
overwhelm
English, today
overwhelmed

From overwhelm + -ed. overwhelm comes from Middle English overwhelmen, from enm + over-, from Old English ofer-. Middle English overwhelmen, equivalent to over + whelm.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Feelings & Character, A Man Called Ove, Moods & Relationships

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

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overwhelmed in the wild

South Vietnamese commando units and the American Special Forces resisted heavily using machine guns but were overwhelmed by the arrival of a People's Army of Vietnam mortar unit.
Battle of Hiep Hoa
Nevertheless, in terms of volumes sold, the Augusta was overwhelmed by Fiat's much more aggressively priced 508 Ballila.
Lancia Augusta
The Java Jacket first appeared at the Seattle Coffeefest in 1995 and Sorensen and his wife Colleen were overwhelmed with requests and orders to fill.
Coffee cup sleeve
The invasion force quickly overwhelmed the English forces of Henry de Percy, 1st Baron Percy encamped around Turnberry Castle, but failed to take the castle.
Battle of Turnberry
Newsted broke silence in 2016 to explain having been overwhelmed with projects.
Newsted

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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.

Related words

the ofer- family

overwhelming overwhelmed

overwhelmed — used about once every 837 pages · #4,168 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of overwhelmed

1adjectiveoverwhelmedUnable to cope because there is more work, pressure or emotion than you can manage.B2~35%

“By Thursday she was overwhelmed and stopped answering the phone.”

2adjectivefloodedFlooded by one strong feeling.B2~18%

“He was overwhelmed with relief when the results came through.”

3verbpastPast form of overwhelm: defeated or buried completely by force or by sheer number.B2~47%

“The small garrison was overwhelmed in under an hour.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.