whelm

Etymology

From Middle English whelmen (“to turn over, capsize; make an arch cover; experience a reversal”), perhaps from Old English *hwealmnian for *hwealfnian, from Old English hwealf (“arched, concave, vaulted; an arched or vaulted ceiling”), akin to Middle English whelven (“to cover over, bury; invert; bring to ruin, to move by rolling”), akin to Old English ahwelfan, ahwylfan (“to cast down, cover over”), Old English helmian (“to cover”), akin to Old Saxon bihwelvian, Dutch welven (“to arch”) German wölben, Old High German welben, Icelandic hvelfa (“to overturn; compare”), Ancient Greek κόλπος (kólpos, “bosom, hollow, gulf”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: whĕlm, IPA^(key): /ʍɛlm/
• Rhymes: -ɛlm
• enPR: wĕlm, IPA^(key): /wɛlm/
• Rhymes: -ɛlm

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Verb

whelm (third-person singular simple present whelms, present participle whelming, simple past and past participle whelmed)

1. To cover; to submerge; to engulf; to bury.
   • 1602, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, 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, John Gay, Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London, Book II, 1804, Samuel Johnson, The Works of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, page 341,

     Then shall the passenger too late deplore / The whelming billow and the faithless oar.

   • 1803, Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature‎, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:

     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.
2. To overcome with emotion.
   • 1903, John Henry Newman, 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;

3. (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 horse-dung and laid in a room will do the same if they are new made; by which means you may whelm some things over them and keep them there.

Noun

whelm (plural whelms)

1. a surge

   "the whelm of the tide"