Overswarm

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To inundate a place or circumstance with an excessive amount of elements causing potential confusion or disorder
2. To flood a space or situation with an overwhelming number of entities causing disruption
3. To inundate or swarm an area with so many individuals that control or clarity is lost

Etymology: Swarm comes from Old English "swearm," a noun for a crowd of bees or other insects, and the verb "overswarm" simply stacks the prefix "over-," meaning excessively or above, onto it. The result is a word that describes a place or situation filled beyond its capacity, a flood of things rather than a single intrusion. The root image is a beehive. A swarm of bees splitting from a hive is a natural, almost noisy spectacle, and English used the same picture for any crowd moving together in large numbers. Over-, in compounds like "overflow" or "overrun," adds the sense of too much, so "overswarm" pictures a space where the swarm has spilled past its edges.