overswell

present singular third person overswells · participle present overswelling · participle past overswelled · past overswelled · alternative o’erswell · alternative over-swell

1. ambitransitiveTo 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.

   5 more examples

   Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!

   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]

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

   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]

   Come, you have made mee resolute and bould, And now receive your lapps ore-swell’d with gold.

   1636, Thomas Heywood, Loves Maistresse, London: John Crowch, act I, scene 1

   1768, Ignatius Sancho, letter to Mr. M—, in Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, London: J. Nichols, 3rd edition, 1784, p. 13, […] the heart gratefully throbbing—overswelled with thankful sensations

   When mushrooms they were fairy bowers, Their marble pillars over-swelling,

   1835, John Clare, “Decay”, in The Rural Muse, London: Whittaker, page 60

   Synonyms: overflow, spill over

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

   [The monster’s] ungrateful progeny rush to gorge on her blood, but it overswells their bellies and they literally burst to death.

   1998, Pamela Norris, chapter 10, in Eve: A Biography, New York: New York University Press, page 322

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   […] 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.

   1729, Jonathan Swift, “Maxims Controlled in Ireland”, in The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, volume 15, London: W. Johnston, published 1765, page 243

   1885, Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, The Burton Club, Volume 1, Translator’s Foreward, p. xvi, 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.

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

   1923, “Proceedings of the World’s Dairy Congress”, in Session, volume 1, 7, p. 289

plural overswells · alternative o’erswell · alternative over-swell

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

   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:

   2 more examples

   [The trial] drew a crowd […] that almost stormed the City Hall corridors. Three policement were needed to keep back the overswell.

   1978, Constance Backhouse, Leah Cohen, chapter 3, in The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women, Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, page 54

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

   1997, David Njoku, Eve, Lagos: True Tales Publication, page 53

   Synonyms: surge