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''overbear'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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Primary

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''overbear'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

overbear - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

overbear (third-person singular simple present overbears, present participle overbearing, simple past overbore, past participle overborne)

  • (obsolete, transitive) To carry over. [10th–14th c.]
  • (transitive) To push through by physical weight or strength; to overwhelm, overcome. [from 16th c.]
    • ✤ I attacked first and they were overborne,/Glad to apologize and even suing/Pardon for what they’d never thought of doing.1
  • (transitive) To prevail over; to dominate, overpower; to oppress. [from 16th c.]
    • ✤ It often fals, in course of common life,/That right long time is overborne of wrong […].2
  • (intransitive) To produce an overabundance of fruit. [from 18th c.]

Etymology

From Middle English overberen; equivalent to over- +‎ bear.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /əʊvəˈbɛː/
  • (US) IPA: /ˌoʊ.vɚˈbɛɹ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 287: ↩

  2. 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩

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Secondary

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