overswell

English

Alternative forms

• o’erswell
• over-swell

Etymology

From over- +‎ swell.

Pronunciation

• Verb senses:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əʊvəˈswɛl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌoʊvɚˈswɛl/
  • Rhymes: -ɛl
• Noun senses:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊvəswɛl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊvɚˌswɛl/

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 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     Fill, Lucius, till the wine o’erswell the cup;

   • 1636, Thomas Heywood, Loves Maistresse‎^[1], 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,^[2]

     […] the heart gratefully throbbing—overswelled with thankful sensations—

   • 1835, John Clare, “Decay”, in The Rural Muse‎^[3], 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,‎^[4], 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^[5], 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,^[6]

     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^[7], 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^[8], 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

• overswollen

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^[9], 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,^[10]

     when no Jihad / opens the conceived / to distention, the reedy creek / to overswells / of mudwallow:

   • 1997, David Njoku, Eve‎^[11], Lagos: True Tales Publication, page 53:

     I could feel that my overswell of emotions had communicated itself to him.

Anagrams

• overwells