Überlaufenen

Überlaufenen is the attributive, inflected form of the German adjective derived from the verb überlaufen, meaning overflowed or overrun. It describes nouns that have experienced overflow, overrun, or intrusion, such as water bodies, containers, or territorial borders. As an attributive adjective, überlaufenen takes endings according to gender, number, and case—for example, die überlaufene Flüsse (nominative plural); dem überlaufenen Gebiet (dative singular neuter); den überlaufenen Grenzabschnitten (accusative plural).

In usage, überlaufenen appears in descriptive, technical, and journalistic contexts, where the sense is literal (a river overflowing) or figurative (a crowded station, an overrun border region, an overfilled container). It is important to distinguish this form from meanings of the verb überlaufen in other senses, such as to defect to another group; in those cases other participial forms are used, and the adjective form would typically align with the noun it modifies.

Etymologically, the word comes from über- (“over”) and laufen (“to run”), with the result used as a participial adjective describing something that has run over or been overrun. The form überlaufenen is one of several inflected endings the adjective can take; its exact ending depends on the noun’s gender, number, and case.

Examples include: Die überlaufenen Flüsse traten über die Ufer. Dem überlaufenen Gebiet musste Schutz zugewiesen werden. Die überlaufenen Kanäle waren schwer zugänglich.