G. A. Wagner
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In the film comedy Ten Things I Hate About You (1999), the character Chastity Church asks, "I know you can be underwhelmed and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" The answer, Chastity, is yes. Contemporary writers sometimes use whelm to denote a middle stage between underwhelm and overwhelm. But that's not how whelm has traditionally been used. Whelm and overwhelm have been with us since Middle English (when they were whelmen and overwhelmen), and throughout the years their meanings have largely overlapped. Both words early on meant "to overturn," for example, and both have also come to mean "to overpower in thought or feeling." After folks started using a third word, underwhelmed, for "unimpressed," whelmed began popping up with the meaning "moderately impressed."
Examples of whelm in a Sentence
Angelique Jackson, Variety, 12 May 2023
Its reputation is built on the backs of 3-series gone by, as this is the first ever 3 to merely whelm us.
—Alexander Stoklosa, Car and Driver, 26 July 2017
Cite this Entry
“Whelm.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whelm. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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whelm
verb
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