Overtake
//oʊvɚˈteɪk// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 An act of overtaking; an overtaking maneuver.
"There wasn't enough distance left before the bend for an overtake, so I had to trundle behind the tractor for another mile."
Verb
- 1 To pass a slower moving object or entity (on the side closest to oncoming traffic).
"The racehorse overtook the lead pack on the last turn."
- 2 catch up with and possibly overtake wordnet
- 3 To become greater than something else in quantity, worth, etc. transitive
"Grocery sales in the north have overtaken those in the south."
- 4 overcome, as with emotions or perceptual stimuli wordnet
- 5 To take by surprise; surprise and overcome; carry away.
"Our plans were overtaken by events."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 travel past wordnet
Example
More examples"Supply will soon overtake demand."
Etymology
From Middle English overtaken, likely a replacement alteration (as the Middle English verb taken replaced nimen (“to take”)), of Middle English overnimen (“to overtake”), from Old English oferniman (“to take by surprise, overtake”), equivalent to over- + take.
Related phrases
More for "overtake"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.