Spelling.School · How to spell
How to spell overflow
What it means: To spill past the edges of a container.
In a sentence: The bathtub will overflow if you keep the water running!
The part people get wrong
Often misspelled as overfow or over-flow.
Same family: flow, overflowing, overflowed, outflow, inflow. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.
Where it comes from: Overflow is formed from the Old English prefix "ofer" (over, beyond) and the verb "flowan" (to flow). English has used forms of "overflow" for centuries to describe both literal flooding and figurative excess, like emotions that ‘overflow.’
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