for carpdeus (or whomever i was speaking about this with)
[thanks to my mother and her Merriam-Webster 365 New Words page-a-day calendar]
whelm
\'hwelm\v1: to cover or engulf completely with usually disastrous effect *2: to overwhelm 3: to pass or go over something so as to bury or submerge it
*Marya was a bit whelmed by the new and unfamiliar task.
DID YOU KNOW?
“It is not overwhelming and it is not underwhelming. You leave the production feeling merely whelmed.” This wrote Michael Phillips in the Los Angeles Times (February 6, 2001). Recently, writers like Phillips have begun using “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.” Around 1950, however, folks started using a third word, “underwhelmed,” for “unimpressed,” and lately “whelmed” has been popping up with the meaning “moderately impressed.”