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

over- +‎ take

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word overtake.

Examples

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

    AllBusiness.com - Home Page RSS 2010

  • 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.

    AllBusiness.com - Home Page RSS 2010

  • 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.

    AllBusiness.com - Home Page RSS 2010

  • 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.

    AllBusiness.com - Home Page RSS 2010

  • 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.

    AllBusiness.com - Home Page RSS 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.