| / English Dictionary |
OVERPOWERING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
So strong as to be irresistible
Example:
an overwhelming majority
Synonyms:
overpowering; overwhelming
Classified under:
Similar:
irresistible; resistless (impossible to resist; overpowering)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb overpower
Context examples:
It must, as you say, have been an overpowering necessity which tore him away in such a fashion, and the same necessity is likely to hold him away.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
All the overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Quite irrelevantly, still at the telephone and talking with her, he felt an overpowering desire to die for her, and visions of heroic sacrifice shaped and dissolved in his whirling brain.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Soil liquefaction, which causes this kind of landslide, occurs when the shaking from a large earthquake rips through moist, loose soil, overpowering the friction that normally holds dirt particles together.
(NASA Map Reveals a New Landslide Risk Factor, NASA)
He raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Harriet's, in the hope that all would yet turn out right, she was even positively civil; but it was an effort; especially as something was going on amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. Elton's nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
This declaration brought on a loud and overpowering reply, of which no part was very distinct, except the frequent exclamations, amounting almost to oaths, which adorned it, and Catherine was left, when it ended, with rather a strengthened belief of there being a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford, and the same happy conviction of her brother's comparative sobriety.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
He went to and fro, as if patrolling the house, and was never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The united efforts of his two unfeeling sisters and of his overpowering friend, assisted by the attractions of Miss Darcy and the amusements of London might be too much, she feared, for the strength of his attachment.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
What could be the reason of his overpowering terror?
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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