Overgrow
verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To grow beyond one's boundaries or containment, or beyond the proper size. intransitive
- 2 grow beyond or across wordnet
- 3 To grow over; (of one thing) to cause (a second thing) to become overgrown (with or by the first thing). transitive
"The utmost they aimed at doing was thoroughly to clear the old Church of all the corruptions and superstitions which had disfigured it in the course of ages, and which, like the flaunting ivy overgrowing some ancient building, not only concealed the Church's fair proportions, but shut out the light of heaven from its windows, and more or less dislocated its structure."
- 4 become overgrown wordnet
- 5 grow too large wordnet
Example
More examples"The utmost they aimed at doing was thoroughly to clear the old Church of all the corruptions and superstitions which had disfigured it in the course of ages, and which, like the flaunting ivy overgrowing some ancient building, not only concealed the Church's fair proportions, but shut out the light of heaven from its windows, and more or less dislocated its structure."
Etymology
From over- + grow.
More for "overgrow"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.