Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To catch up with; draw even or level with.
- transitive verb To pass after catching up with.
- transitive verb To come upon unexpectedly; take by surprise.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The act or fact of overtaking.
- To come up with in traveling the same way, or in pursuit (with or without the idea of passing the person or thing overtaken); catch up with in any course of thought or action.
- To take by surprise; come upon unexpectedly; surprise and overcome; carry away.
- Hence To overpower the senses of.
- Specifically, to overcome with drink; intoxicate: chiefly in the past participle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To come up with in a race, pursuit, progress, or motion
- transitive verb To surpass in production, achievement, etc..
- transitive verb To come upon from behind; to discover; to surprise; to capture; to overcome.
- transitive verb obsolete Hence, figuratively, in the past participle (
overtaken ), drunken. - transitive verb To frustrate or render impossible or irrelevant; -- used mostly of plans, and commonly in the phrase overtaken by events.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
pass a more slowly moving object. - verb To
catch up with, but not pass, a more slowly moving vehicle, animal etc. - verb economics To become
greater than something else - verb To occur
unexpectedly
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb catch up with and possibly overtake
- verb travel past
- verb overcome, as with emotions or perceptual stimuli
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Or could the chap who nabbed the Tour de France title overtake them both?
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010
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Or could the chap who nabbed the Tour de France title overtake them both?
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010
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Shall not his word overtake you though ministers that speak unto you will not live for ever?
The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Hugh Binning 1640
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It may be realized that in spite of its air of being impossible to "overtake" -- I must, in this connection, continue to quote its mistress -- there was an attractiveness about the dwelling of the
The Imperialist Sara Jeannette Duncan
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What gets Washington all jammed up is when ideology and labels overtake what is the clear reality of a circumstance.
Presidents Remarks After Crime Bill Passage ITY National Archives 1994
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And, helped by this widgetisation, mobile devices will perhaps overtake the computer as the principal vehicle for connectivity - overtake, that is, in those parts of the world where they have not reigned all along.
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And, helped by this widgetisation, mobile devices will perhaps overtake the computer as the principal vehicle for connectivity - overtake, that is, in those parts of the world where they have not reigned all along.
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And, helped by this widgetisation, mobile devices will perhaps overtake the computer as the principal vehicle for connectivity - overtake, that is, in those parts of the world where they have not reigned all along.
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And, helped by this widgetisation, mobile devices will perhaps overtake the computer as the principal vehicle for connectivity - overtake, that is, in those parts of the world where they have not reigned all along.
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And, helped by this widgetisation, mobile devices will perhaps overtake the computer as the principal vehicle for connectivity - overtake, that is, in those parts of the world where they have not reigned all along.
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