Meaning of overswell | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To swell or rise above (something, especially the rim of a container, the sides of something hollow, etc.).
   ambitransitive
2. To cause (something) to be too swollen or large; to become too swollen or large.
   ambitransitive

Examples

“In some years the river overswells its banks, causing widespread flooding.”

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

“Fill⟳, Lucius, till the wine o’erswell the cup;”

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

“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,”

“[…] then Badoglio and his staff [went by] looking rather big for their cars, like⟳ the necks of bookmakers overswelling their collars;”

“[…] 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⟳.”

“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.”

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

CEFR level