overwhelming
Americanadjective
-
that overwhelms; overpowering.
The temptation to despair may become overwhelming.
-
so great as to render resistance or opposition useless.
an overwhelming majority.
adjective
Usage
What’s the difference between overwhelming and underwhelming? The over- in overwhelming means “too much” and the under- in underwhelming essentially means “too little,” and the two words can be direct opposites, but they’re usually used in different contexts.The verb overwhelm most commonly means to cause to be overcome with emotion as a result of an amount of something (work, stress, etc.) that’s just too much to handle. Something that’s overwhelming causes you to be overcome in this way. Underwhelm means to fail to impress, especially when that is the expectation. Underwhelming, then, means unimpressive or disappointing.Both words also have other adjective forms: overwhelmed (overcome to the point of not being able to manage) and underwhelmed (unimpressed or disappointed).Things that are overwhelming don’t always involve stress or other negative emotions. A friend’s generosity or the birth of a child can be overwhelming. Still, it’s usually about feeling a lot. In this way, underwhelming can be the opposite of overwhelming in some situations. For example, the same concert may be overwhelming for one person (perhaps it’s the first concert they’ve ever attended) but underwhelming for someone else (maybe because it doesn’t meet their high expectations).And, yes, whelm is a word. It can mean the same thing as overwhelm, but it’s very rarely used.Here’s an example of overwhelming and underwhelming used correctly in the same sentence.Example: It was a bad dining experience—the noise in the restaurant was overwhelming and the food was underwhelming.Want to learn more? Read the breakdown of the difference between overwhelm and underwhelm.
Other Word Forms
- overwhelmingly adverb
- overwhelmingness noun
Etymology
Origin of overwhelming
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Big Tech tumbled, with its outsize weighting overwhelming the index after the group also saw heavy losses in February amid worries over high valuations.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 3, 2026
Called distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks, these were massive floods of junk internet data designed to knock websites offline by overwhelming the data pipes that connected them.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 3, 2026
The risk to prediction-market firms is potentially existential, considering that sports markets make up an overwhelming majority of trading volume and fee revenue for the platforms.
From Barron's • Apr. 2, 2026
Burden has been surprised by the overwhelming resonance of her book, and the universality of the emotional and psychological pain she endured in her marriage.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2026
After more than four months of debate, both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted by overwhelming margins to approve the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From "Because They Marched" by Russell Freedman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
