Verb

(head)

(whelm)

Verb

(en verb)

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

* 1602 , '', Act 2, Scene 2, 1813, ''The Plays of William Shakespeare , Volume 5: Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, page 90,

Give fire; she is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!

* 1716 , , ''The Works of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland , page 341,

Then ?hall the pa??enger too late deplore / The whelming billow and the faithless oar.

* {{quote-book

, year=1803 , year_published=2008 , edition= , editor= , author=Earsmus Darwin , title=The Temple of Nature , chapter= citation , genre= , publisher=The Gutenberg Project , isbn= , page= , passage=Deep-whelm?d beneath, in vast sepulchral caves, / Oblivion dwells amid unlabell?d graves; }}

* 1998', Madelyn Roeder Camrud, '' Under the '''Whelming Tide: The 1997 Flood of the Red River of the North .

To overcome with emotion.

* 1903 , , Hymn for Vespers, Sunday'', ''Verses on Various Occasions'', 1989, ''Prayers, Verses, and Devotions , page 638,

Hear, lest the whelming weight of crime / Wreck us with life in view;

(obsolete) To throw (something) over a thing so as to cover it.

* 1708 , John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry , 2nd Edition, page 253,

Balls made of Hor?e-dung and laid in a Room will do the ?ame if they are new made; by which means you may whelm ?ome things over them and keep them there.