whelm
English · Thesaurus
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whelm¹
- /ʍɛlm/ US, UK
- /wɛlm/ US, UK
Rhymes with -ɛlm
Where it comes from
From Middle English whelmen (“to turn over, capsize; to invert, turn upside down”), 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”).
Cognates
The English word is cognate with Dutch welven (“to arch”), Old Saxon bihwelvian (“to cover, hide”), German wölben (“to bend, curve, arch”), Icelandic hvelfa (“to overturn”), German Walm (“a vaulted roof”), Icelandic hvolf (“vaulted ceiling”), Ancient Greek κόλπος (kólpos, “bosom, hollow, gulf”).
The noun is derived from the verb.
verb whelms · whelming · whelmed
- To bury, to cover; to engulf, to submerge. Giue fire: ſhe is my prize, or Ocean whelme them all.
-
To throw (something) over a thing so as to cover it.
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.
Similar: whemmel
- To ruin or destroy. 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.
- To overcome with emotion; to overwhelm. 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.
noun whelms
- A surge of water. the whelm of the tide
- A wooden drainpipe, a hollowed out tree trunk, turned with the cavity downwards to form an arched watercourse. A whelm was a wooden drainpipe, a hollowed-out tree trunk, "whelmed down" or turned with the concavity downwards to form an arched watercourse.
whelm²
- /ʍɛlm/ US, UK
- /wɛlm/ US, UK
Rhymes with -ɛlm
Where it comes from
Back-formation from overwhelm /underwhelm, as if a base verb "whelm" described a middling intensity between under- and overwhelming.
verb whelms · whelming · whelmed
- To emotionally affect at an intensity in between underwhelm and overwhelm; to just satisfy or just meet expectations. Hey guys, Scott here with my first impressions of the Jason 10th anniversary patch. And I have to say I am I'm kind of just whelmed. Like it's I'm not disappointed and I'm not like blown away or excited by anything that I've seen here.
Translations
Every language
verb to bury, cover; to engulf, submerge
| 中文 | 壓倒 /压倒 yādǎo, 淹沒 /淹没 yānmò |
|---|---|
| Français | submerger |
| Italiano | ingolfare, impantanarsi, immergersi, infognarsi, sopraffare, seppellire |
verb to overcome with emotion
| Français | submerger |
|---|---|
| Italiano | essere sopraffatto |
noun (poetic, also figuratively) surge of water
| עברית | נַחְשׁוֹל nakhshol |
|---|
Talk about this word "whelm." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/whelm. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. whelm. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/whelm "whelm." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/whelm.Cite this
@misc{whelm_2026,
title = {whelm},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/whelm},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
