Word.ws English Dictionary

overgang

overgang verb: to go beyond or above; to exceed.

Verb

overgang (third-person singular simple present overgangs, present participle overganging, simple past and past participle overganged)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To go beyond or above; to exceed.
    • Ye're straight and tall, handsome withall, But your pride overgangs your witc. 1600, unknown author, Proud Lady Margaret
    • But at the last it will overgang, Suppose that many think it lang.c. 1650, unknown author, Eger and Grime

Noun

overgang (plural overgangs)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) Something that goes across or over; a transition.
    • … all such udall lands, quoy lands, and others, as was evictit frae them be his Lordship's courts of perambulation, and overgangs, holden upon the lands of the same and divers places thereof, mentioned most specially in his Lordship's court-books, he renounced the same accordingly.1587, Lord Robert of Orkney, "A renunciation" quoted in Notes on Orkney and Zetland, Alexander Peterkin, page 127
    • Sometimes we can put our finger direct on the overgang.1883, George Stephens, Prof: S. Bugge's studies on Northern mythology shortly examined

Examples of overgang in a sentence

  • [...] the preservation of adequate or established footpaths, the creation of new stiles or overgangs, in aid of the same object, in the fences required in the process of inclosure, and so forth.1892, Quarter Sessions Records of the Peace (Yorkshire North Riding), volume 9, page 249:
  • Its palmbranch logo - "the earliest Christian symbol of triumph over death - and the "still half-Scandian dialect in 12 lines of stave-rime verse" all "announce the overgang from heathendom."1990, Dolores Warwick Frese, “Wulf and Eadwacer: The Adulterous Woman Reconsidered”, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature...

Forms of overgang

Verb
third-person singular presentovergangs
present participleoverganging
past participleoverganged
pastoverganged
Noun
pluralovergangs

Origin of overgang

From Middle English overgangen, from Old English ofergangan, from Proto-Germanic *uberganganą, made up from *uber (“over”) + *ganganą (“to walk, step”), equivalent to over- + gang (“to walk, step”). Cognate with Scots owergang (“to overwhelm, master, dominate”).

From Middle English *overgang, from Old English ofergang (“a going across”), equivalent to over- + gang (“a going”).

Words formed from overgang

  • overganger

Questions about overgang

What does overgang mean?
Overgang means to go beyond or above; to exceed.
How do you use overgang in a sentence?
[...] the preservation of adequate or established footpaths, the creation of new stiles or overgangs, in aid of the same object, in the fences required in the process of inclosure, and so forth.
What part of speech is overgang?
Overgang can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overgang?
The past tense of overgang is overganged.

Words near overgang in the dictionary

  1. overgains
  2. overgamble
  3. overgambled
  4. overgambles
  5. overgambling
  6. overgang
  7. overganged
  8. overganging
  9. overgangs
  10. overgarment
  11. overgarments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overgang (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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