onlap
onlap noun: the phenomenon of successively younger rock strata extending progressively further across an erosion surface cut in older rocks.
Noun
onlap (plural onlaps)
- The phenomenon of successively younger rock strata extending progressively further across an erosion surface cut in older rocks.
- Displacement on F3 was followed by continued accumulation and onlap of the fine-grained sands of unit 3 on the footwall and development of soil Qb2.2001 December 14, Senthil Kumar et al., “Earthquake Recurrence and Rupture Dynamics of Himalayan Frontal Thrust, India”, in Science, volume 294, number 5550, →DOI, pages 2328–2331
- Synonyms:
- overlap
Verb
onlap (third-person singular simple present onlaps, present participle onlapping, simple past and past participle onlapped)
- To form an onlap.
- Elsewhere, many of the youngest volcanic plains units onlap tesserae at crustal plateau boundaries.1998 March 6, Roger J. Phillips, Vicki L. Hansen, “Geological Evolution of Venus: Rises, Plains, Plumes, and Plateaus”, in Science, volume 279, number 5356, →DOI, pages 1492–1497
Synonyms of onlap
Antonyms
- offlap
Forms of onlap
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | onlaps |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | onlaps |
| present participle | onlapping |
| past participle | onlapped |
| past | onlapped |
Origin of onlap
From on + lap.
Questions about onlap
- What does onlap mean?
- Onlap means the phenomenon of successively younger rock strata extending progressively further across an erosion surface cut in older rocks.
- What part of speech is onlap?
- Onlap can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of onlap?
- The plural of onlap is onlaps.
Words near onlap in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: onlap (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “onlap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/onlap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.