the.com/overwhelmed
proof you cared enough to take on more than one human should.
means Feeling buried under more demands, emotions, or work than you can manage at once.
from From Middle English 'whelmen,' to capsize or cover over — picture a boat 'whelmed' by a wave, turned upside down and swallowed. Add the intensifying 'over-' and you get the sense of being completely engulfed. The word started literally watery, describing things drowned or buried, before it sank into the realm of feelings, where most of us now meet it.
- word origin
- from whelm, meaning to capsize a boat entirely
- underwhelm came later
- coined in 1950s as a deliberate joke
- brain effect
- stress narrows focus, ignoring possible solutions
- no middle ground
- english rarely lets you be simply whelmed
twitter moderation team 2022 — elon musk fired 80% of twitter's 5,500 staff, leaving remaining team overwhelmed with content moderation across 500 million daily users
fema after hurricane katrina — august 2005: federal agency received 1.5 million requests for assistance with only a fraction of staff to process claims