Word.ws English Dictionary

overcoming

overcoming is the present participle and gerund of overcome.

Meaning of overcome

Verb

overcome (third-person singular simple present overcomes, present participle overcoming, simple past overcame, past participle overcome)

  1. (transitive) To surmount (a physical or abstract obstacle); to prevail over, to get the better of.
    • But sith this wretched woman ouercome / Of anguish, rather then of crime hath beene,1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 58
    Synonyms:
    hurdle
  2. (intransitive) To prevail.
    • Hee that ouercommeth, the same shalbe clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the booke of life, but I will confesse his name before my Father, and before his Angels.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 3:5
  3. (transitive) To recover from (a difficulty), to get over.
  4. (transitive) To win against or prevail over in some sort of battle, contest, etc.
    • to overcome enemies in battle
    Synonyms:
    vanquish
  5. To come or pass over; to spread over.
    • I was overcome with anger.
    Synonyms:
    overtake
  6. (obsolete) To overflow; to surcharge.
    • A Crop so plenteous, as the Land to load,
      O'ercome the crowded Barns1697, Virgil, “The Second Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

See all 9 meanings of overcome

Noun

overcoming (plural overcomings)

  1. The act by which something is overcome, or surmounted.
    • Ther with all cam kyng Arthur but with a fewe peple and slewe on the lyfte hand and on the ryght hand that wel nyhe ther escaped no man / but alle were slayne to the nombre of xxx M / And whan the bataille was all ended the kynge kneled doune and thanked god mekely / and thenne he sente for the...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “iij”, in Le Morte Darthur, book IV
    • In the eyes of their witnesses, exemplary figures redeem their own suffering, which in turn emboldens these witnesses to attempt painful self-overcomings of their own.2005, Daniel Conway, Nietzsche and the Political, page 87

Forms of overcoming

pluralovercomings

Questions about overcoming

What does overcoming mean?
Overcoming means the act by which something is overcome, or surmounted.
What is overcoming the present participle and gerund of?
Overcoming is the present participle and gerund of overcome.
What part of speech is overcoming?
Overcoming is a noun.
What is the plural of overcoming?
The plural of overcoming is overcomings.

Words near overcoming in the dictionary

  1. overcomers
  2. overcomes
  3. overcomest
  4. overcometh
  5. overcomfortable
  6. overcoming
  7. overcomingly
  8. overcomings
  9. overcommend
  10. overcommended
  11. overcommending

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overcoming (page history and authors); overcome (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.

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Cite this entry: “overcoming.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overcoming. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.