Overwhelm vs Overween - What's the difference?
overwhelm | overween |
To engulf, surge over and submerge.
To overpower, crush.
* Bible, Psalms lxxviii. 53
To overpower emotionally.
To cause to surround, to cover.
(ergative) To think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself).
* (rfdate), Milton, Sonnet IX :
* 2005 , A. J. Liebling, published in Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer , page 327:
To make or render arrogant and overweening.
* 1987 October, in Field & Stream , volume 92, number 6, page 24:
* 2009 , Ariel Dorfman, The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds , page 6:
(proscribed) To overwhelm.
* 2003 , Michael Gelven, What happens to us when we think: transformation and reality , page 44:
As verbs the difference between overwhelm and overween
is that overwhelm is to engulf, surge over and submerge while overween is (ergative) to think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself).overwhelm
English
Verb
- The dinghy was overwhelmed by the great wave.
- In December 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland with overwhelming force.
- The sea overwhelmed their enemies.
- He was overwhelmed with guilt.
- Joy overwhelmed her when she realized that she had won a million dollars.
- (Papin)
Derived terms
* overwhelmingSee also
* too many balls in the airoverween
English
Verb
(en verb)- and they that overween , / And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
- The clouds on Futurity Day bore out in a general way this prognostication. But he overweened himself.
- There is, I suppose, the cheap drama of man sticking his nose into an area where it does little good except to expand his already overweened vanity.
- Sometimes we manage to come up with original ways of viewing a world hardened, stratified, overweened by its own power, a world which believes itself as omnipotent as its technological achievements might seem to imply.
- The invasion of a vast enemy host upon the unprepared is unstoppable; the huge phalanx of tanks overweens our small army of trucks and rifles;
