Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To outlive; live longer than; survive.
  • To live too long.
  • To live too fast or too actively.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To outlive.
  • intransitive verb To live too long, too luxuriously, or too actively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To survive.
  • verb transitive To outlive; live longer than.
  • verb intransitive To live too long.
  • verb intransitive To live too fast, too luxuriously, or too actively.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English overliven, from Old English oferlibban ("to survive"), equivalent to over- +‎ live. Cognate with Dutch overleven ("to survive"), German überleben ("to survive, outlive"), Swedish överleva ("to survive, outlive, outlast").

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Examples

  • No! women need to think more, not less; to increase, not diminish brain-work; to overlive the drudgery of it, whether it involve teaching, writing, study, the work of a profession, or house-work, by breathing into it the living spirit of love, which sanctifies and ennobles whatever the hands or the brain find to do.

    The Education of American Girls Anna Callender Brackett

  • All the wretchedness of her life seems to have culminated, the little doubts she has thrust out or tried to overlive.

    Floyd Grandon's Honor Amanda Minnie Douglas 1873

  • She is rather pleased than otherwise, she even breathes little bits of encouragement and commendation to Violet, as if seconding her efforts; and Violet falls into the mistake that many have made before her, of comforting a young man and assisting him to overlive his fancy for another woman, as well as secretly blaming the other.

    Floyd Grandon's Honor Amanda Minnie Douglas 1873

  • If we could only use folks we love, while they do live, with the like loving reverence as we shall do after they be dead, if we overlive them!

    Joyce Morrell's Harvest The Annals of Selwick Hall Emily Sarah Holt 1864

  • 'Tis even as we feared, for he saith there is no doubt that _Madge_ is dying, nor shall she overlive many days.

    Joyce Morrell's Harvest The Annals of Selwick Hall Emily Sarah Holt 1864

  • Her Majesty's life will never be safe for a moment while she lives; and what would become of us all did she overlive the

    Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • Esclairmonde -- nay, but then I must overlive thee, mind I should not love that. '

    The Caged Lion Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • Everything has its appointed time, superstition like the rest; and theologies, that they may not overlive the period in which they can be of advantage to mankind, are condemned, by the conditions of their being, to weave

    Froude's Essays in Literature and History With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc James Anthony Froude 1856

  • If the physician desire help, the burden grows great: there is a growth of the disease then; but there must be an autumn too; but whether an autumn of the disease or me, it is not my part to choose; but if it be of me, it is of both; my disease cannot survive me, I may overlive it.

    Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Together with Death's Duel John Donne 1601

  • London-based antiquarian Ben Rea left $15 million to one of his 15 cats that would overlive other 14 cats, which the millionaire had.

    Pravda.Ru 2009

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