aswarm

comparative more aswarm · superlative most aswarm

1. Filled or overrun (with moving objects or beings).

   The juniors hurried out like bees aswarm, asking no questions, clattered up the staircase, and added themselves to the embroilment.

   1899 February, Rudyard Kipling, “The Impressionists”, in Stalky & Co., London: Macmillan & Co., published 1899, →OCLC, page 107

   3 more examples

   1882, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, “Ben Jonson,” in Tristram of Lyonesse, and other poems, Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher, 1904, p. 309, The mountain where thy Muse’s feet made warm Those lawns that revelled with her dance divine Shines yet with fire as it was wont to shine From tossing torches round the dance aswarm.

   Over all the more populous districts the air was ever aswarm with planes up to a height of five miles, where the giant air-liners plied between the continents.

   1930, Olaf Stapledon, “IV, 3”, in Last and First Men

   He banished all irrelevancies from his canalised mind. His great ham of a face was tickling as though aswarm with insects, but there was no room left in his brain to receive the messages which his nerve endings were presumably delivering—his brain was full.

   1946, Mervyn Peake, “Blood at Midnight”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

   Synonyms: swarming