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whelm

verb
/ʍɛlm/US

Etymology

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.

  1. derived from *kʷelp-✻ — “to curve”
  2. derived from *hwalbą✻ — “arch, vault”
  3. derived from *hwalb✻
  4. inherited from *hwealmnian✻
  5. inherited from whelmen — “to turn over, capsize; to invert, turn upside down”

Definitions

  1. To bury, to cover

    To bury, to cover; to engulf, to submerge.

    • Giue fire: ſhe is my prize, or Ocean whelme them all.
    • Still let me walk; for oft' the ſudden Gale / Ruffles the Tide, and ſhifts the dang'rous Sail, / Then ſhall the Paſſenger, too late, deplore / The whelming Billow, and the faithleſs Oar; [...]
    • Such is the fate of ſimple Bard, / On Life's rough ocean luckleſs ſtarr'd! / Unſkilful he to note the card / Of prudent Lore, / Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, / And whelm him o'er!

  2. 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.

  3. To ruin or destroy.

    • In the twentieth night of the nine hundredth moon, as night came up the valley, I performed the mystic rites of each of the gods in the temple as is my wont, lest any of the gods should grow angry in the night and whelm us while we slept.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. To overcome with emotion

      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.

    2. A surge of water.

      • the whelm of the tide
      • I wonder about things and the people between us. The currents, the feedback, and the whelms. The sharp cracks between trees, and the tolling between the knees.
      • [...] I stood waiting, glad of a first tremor / Then caught up in the now-or-never whelm / Of one and all the full length of the train.

    3. A wooden drainpipe, a hollowed out tree trunk, turned with the cavity downwards to form…

      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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for whelm. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA