verb

• (transitive, archaic) To bury, to cover; to engulf, to submerge.
  "Giue fire: ſhe is my prize, or Ocean whelme them all."
• (transitive, obsolete) To throw (something) over a thing so as to cover it.
  "Gnats and Flies are very troubleſome in Houſes [...] Balls made of Horſe-dung and laid in a Room will do the ſame [attract gnats and flies] if they are new made; by which means you may whelm ſome things over them and keep them there."
• (transitive, obsolete) To ruin or destroy.
  "Here, where a Cæsar stood two thousand years ago, the traveller from another continent (though not from New Zealand) stands to-day, to muse—at Pæstum, as at Pompeii—on the fate which overtakes all human things, and at last whelms man and his works in one undistinguishable ruin."
• (intransitive, archaic) To overcome with emotion; to overwhelm.
  "Hear Thou our plaint, when light is gone / And lawlessness and strife prevail. / Hear, lest the whelming weight of crime / Wreck us with life in view; / Lest thoughts and schemes of sense and time / Earn us a sinner's due."

noun

• (poetic, also figuratively) A surge of water.
  "the whelm of the tide"