What's the difference between devour and overwhelm?

Devour


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To eat up with greediness; to consume ravenously; to feast upon like a wild beast or a glutton; to prey upon.
  • (v. t.) To seize upon and destroy or appropriate greedily, selfishly, or wantonly; to consume; to swallow up; to use up; to waste; to annihilate.
  • (v. t.) To enjoy with avidity; to appropriate or take in eagerly by the senses.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She devoured political science texts, took evening classes at Goldsmiths college, and performed at protests and fundraisers, but became disillusioned.
  • (2) On land, sand miners have devoured whole swaths of beach, from Jamaica to Russia.
  • (3) I gaze at it across the street and, as if by magic, I ache with longing, just as I used to in the days when a trip here was the most enjoyable thing I could possibly imagine: when books were all I wanted, when I thought of them as pieces of ripe fruit, waiting to be peeled and devoured.
  • (4) Within half an hour, George Galloway – the native of Dundee, MP for Bradford West, a former Labour MP for inner Glasgow, and figurehead of the Respect party – is sitting in Wetherspoon's, devouring fish and chips and granting about a dozen requests for photographs.
  • (5) The contents of the posterior cranial fossa are actively "sucked up", "devoured" by the latter.
  • (6) Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes began the night recalling that the soon-to-be nominee loves lifestyle TV “and can devour buffalo wings”.
  • (7) She reels off esoteric book recommendations ("I just devoured this great book about the mistaken theories of pre-historic sexuality.
  • (8) Tissue samples from partly devoured carcasses contained T. spiralis larvae, implicating cannibalism as a major vehicle for the spread of T. spiralis in the herd.
  • (9) This is the real deal, what people want, what they can’t wait to devour.
  • (10) Partners of depressives experience themselves often as being totally in their hands respectively "devoured" by them.
  • (11) But now players devour it.” Jürgen Klinsmann was the conduit in 2004 when he became Germany’s head coach.
  • (12) Desperate and with nowhere else to go, eventually I found a cheap hotel, which devoured my dwindling resources.
  • (13) Growing up in 1940s French Algeria, the young Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent dreamed of Paris: a bullied outcast at school, he escaped into fantasy at home – devouring his mother's fashion magazines, sketching endlessly, and predicting (in the safety of his adoring family circle, at least) a future of spectacular fame.
  • (14) The monster the US has unleashed on the rest of the world is steadily devouring its own.
  • (15) I say to them: ‘Five minutes with this guy, and he’ll win you over.’” In a quiet restaurant in the City on Friday afternoon, over a selection of steak cuts that he devours efficiently, Joshua talks without edge about Fury, about his opponent in London on Saturday night, Dillian Whyte, and about himself.
  • (16) We tend to take our harmless fun where we find it – even if, like KidZania, it’s on the top floor of the next scourge devouring Bangkok, a giant shopping mall.
  • (17) Like other contemporary artists, Allen Jones being an obvious example, he devoured and then recycled the imagery of popular American magazines.
  • (18) I’m not being ironic: the bogs of western Britain and Ireland don’t freeze as they do in Scandinavia, so the geese can devour the roots of marshy plants on which they depend.
  • (19) The reef will also be aided by an $89m boost to programs such as the Reef Trust, a Coalition plan to improve water quality and tackle threats such as a plague of starfish which has devoured much of the reef’s coral.
  • (20) Applying pragmatism to her desire to learn English under communism, she devoured technical manuals and copies of the Morning Star .

Overwhelm


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To cover over completely, as by a great wave; to overflow and bury beneath; to ingulf; hence, figuratively, to immerse and bear down; to overpower; to crush; to bury; to oppress, etc., overpoweringly.
  • (v. t.) To project or impend over threateningly.
  • (v. t.) To cause to surround, to cover.
  • (n.) The act of overwhelming.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The following conclusions emerge: (i) when the 3' or the 3' penultimate base of the oligonucleotide mismatched an allele, no amplification product could be detected; (ii) when the mismatches were 3 and 4 bases from the 3' end of the primer, differential amplification was still observed, but only at certain concentrations of magnesium chloride; (iii) the mismatched allele can be detected in the presence of a 40-fold excess of the matched allele; (iv) primers as short as 13 nucleotides were effective; and (v) the specificity of the amplification could be overwhelmed by greatly increasing the concentration of target DNA.
  • (2) She added: “We will continue to act upon the overwhelming majority view of our shareholders.” The vote was the second year running Ryanair had suffered a rebellion on pay.
  • (3) T cells admixed in the germinal centers were overwhelmingly of the T-helper type.
  • (4) Unfortunately for the governor, he could win both states and still face the overwhelming likelihood of failure if he doesn't take Ohio, where the poll found Obama out front 51-43.
  • (5) In Britain, the European election is overwhelmingly seen through the prism of domestic politics.
  • (6) Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian Asked if Watson should seek to refresh his mandate after Corbyn’s overwhelming victory among members, McCluskey added: “Well, if Tom wants to try to refresh his mandate it would be interesting to see what happens.” Watson said it was time “to be proud of our party”, because the Conservatives were beatable and the prime minister, Theresa May, could call an election any time.
  • (7) The government acknowledged it had been overwhelmed by the devastation from the deadliest quake in Nepal in over 80 years.
  • (8) He made me laugh and cry, and his courage in writing about what he was going through was sometimes quite overwhelming.
  • (9) Although alpha 1-antiprotease (alpha 1-AP) binds and inactivates NE and is the major antielastase of the lower respiratory tract, antielastase defenses may be overwhelmed in CF, leading to progressive lung damage.
  • (10) And HAP has shown that the key finding that debt slows growth was driven overwhelmingly by the exclusion of four years of data from New Zealand.
  • (11) Cathepsin D-like acid proteinase existed overwhelmingly in the mucosal layer and was hardly detected in the gastric juice.
  • (12) Hence, reaction of chemical carcinogen with nuclear DNA is possible only when the cell is overwhelmed leading to cell death, or following a temporary breach of the nuclear membrane control points, but the DNA damage in the latter is totally reparable.
  • (13) The facts are clear: the overwhelming majority of EU citizens in Britain are contributors, not freeloaders.” But that was not the official position of any of the parties involved, so it went mostly unsaid.
  • (14) Of 54 patients with poor-grade aneurysms, ventriculostomy was placed in 47 (87.0%) and yielded high ICP's in the overwhelming majority, with the mean ICP being 40.2 cm H2O.
  • (15) There is overwhelming evidence, today, that such factors are involved in the manifestation of acute as well as chronic, non-specific as well as well as specific inflammation.
  • (16) Mobile phone networks, overwhelmed by demand, were down for hours, with authorities advising people to use email or text messages instead.
  • (17) The immunity was enacted by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, with the support of leading Democrats including Barack Obama, who had promised - when seeking his party's nomination - to filibuster any bill that contained retroactive telecom immunity.
  • (18) There’s an overwhelming sadness among kids like that who have been kept there for a very long time.
  • (19) Panic attacks would overwhelm her periodically and she experienced regular “ scanxiety ” – the feelings of dread that grip patients before new tests.
  • (20) In the meantime, Malaysia Airlines’ overwhelming focus will be the same as it has been from the outset – to provide the families with a comprehensive support programme.