overwell
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: overwells
form: overwelling
form: overwelled
form: overwelled
Etymology: From over- + well.
Senses: examples: text: Then sit in silence down, and brooding dwell, Through the slow years, on all we loved, and tell Each tone, each look of love, each syllable, With lips that work, with eyes that overwell!
ref: 1864, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, Poems, page 218:
text: Then, after going round a little, with surprise of daylight, the water overwelled the edge, and softly went through lines of light to shadows and an untold bourne.
ref: 1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter XIX, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC:
text: Shishaldin on Unimak Island was "flaming high" May 28, 1929, and glowing matter overwelled the edge of the crater and rolled down the slopes;
ref: 1932 March 2, The Volcano Letter, page 267:
glosses: To overflow.
examples: text: How his heart so proudly overwells!
ref: 1906, Private Concerts, page 19:
text: When he himself has stubbed a toe, The other overwells with woe.
ref: 1946, Robert Peter Tristram Coffin, Poems for a Son with Wings, page 86:
text: And there was Miss Brindle, poor girl, sad amidst the general joy. My heart overwelled just to look at her.
ref: 1965, Warren Miller, The Siege of Harlem, page 34:
text: May we look to those wild places of contradiction where we are at once overwelling with the sweet nectar of hope and cracked by the driest apathy and dusty hopelessness.
ref: 2020, Danielle Dulsky, Seasons of Moon and Flame, page 302:
text: As an artist Norm was overwelled by the colors, Kathy just stood silently taking at all in.
ref: 2022, Jay Fullum ·, IALFs, Humans, and RAHs, page 295:
glosses: To experience such strong emotion that it cannot be contained.
examples: text: The heavy-throated cannon-song of battle boomed and swelled, Roared louder, lifted mightier, overwelled!
ref: 1898 May, Edwin Ford Piper, “Poem”, in The Kiote, volume 1, number 4, page 85:
text: Thorns sing a carol of Soft May-snows; The young laburnum Overwells, With peals of bloom from Inaudible bells;
ref: 1902, Roden Noel, The Collected Poems of Roden Noel, page 354:
text: The overwelling laughter of the black incubus had ceased, and he turned upon the intruders a face contorted by diabolic lust and fury.
ref: 2007, Clark Ashton Smith, The Black Abbot of Puthuum:
glosses: To fill with a crescendo of sound.
examples: text: The flames overwelled and he made a dash for the door where this Kodizia was grunting like a pig.
ref: 1991, Ositadinma Adeolu Nnanyelugo Olusanya Ike, Surprise Party: An Anthology of Short Stories, page 60:
text: The crowds on the street that night were overwelling and it was a variable sea of black and everybody was there, Red Rolly, Bertah from Biloxi, Arty Shaw, Wild Bill Latura, Chuck the Knife, Axle Concertina, Styx, Sam, all the women you ever bedded, your cousin Lampedusa, the Greenville Gang, and that Lup Garou from the Clubs, skulking around, and it was quite a site.
ref: 2019, Bryan Furuness, My Name Was Never Frankenstein:
text: The Reptilian army quickly overwelled the natives and took the small planet as their own.
ref: 2022, C. L. Frazier, Galaxies: Farewell Earth:
glosses: To flow over; to overrun.