overswell

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To swell or rise above (something, especially the rim of a container, the sides of…

   To swell or rise above (something, especially the rim of a container, the sides of something hollow, etc.).

   • In some years the river overswells its banks, causing widespread flooding.
   • Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!
   • Fill, Lucius, till the wine o’erswell the cup;
2. 2

   To cause (something) to be too swollen or large

   To cause (something) to be too swollen or large; to become too swollen or large.

   • […] 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.
   • A frequent difficulty in the manufacture of Emmental cheese in America, and perhaps elsewhere, is a tendency for the cheese to overswell.
3. 3

   An excessive or sudden increase or flood (of something).

   • [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, when no Jihad / opens the conceived / to distention, the reedy creek / to overswells / of mudwallow:
   • I could feel that my overswell of emotions had communicated itself to him.

The neighborhood

• neighboroverswollen