Word.ws English Dictionary

bursting at the seams

bursting at the seams is the present participle and gerund of burst at the seams.

Meaning of burst at the seams

Verb

burst at the seams (third-person singular simple present bursts at the seams, present participle bursting at the seams, simple past and past participle burst at the seams)

  1. To be too full; to hold more than can be comfortably accommodated.
    • "HS2 is based on the West Coast Main Line bursting at the seams. Both that and the East Coast Main Line are at bursting point for capacity.2020 June 3, Richard Clinnick, “Network News: HS2 progress: "volume of activity is growing"”, in Rail, page 11

Questions about bursting at the seams

What is bursting at the seams the present participle and gerund of?
Bursting at the seams is the present participle and gerund of burst at the seams.

Words near bursting at the seams in the dictionary

  1. burstin'
  2. burstiness
  3. burstinesses
  4. bursting
  5. bursting a blood vessel
  6. bursting at the seams
  7. bursting forth
  8. bursting in
  9. bursting into
  10. bursting into flames
  11. bursting into flower

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bursting at the seams (page history and authors); burst at the seams (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bursting at the seams.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bursting_at_the_seams. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.