Word.ws English Dictionary

overleap

UK/əʊ.vəˈliːp/US/oʊ.vərˈliːp/

overleap verb: to leap over, to jump over, to cross by jumping.

Verb

overleap (third-person singular simple present overleaps, present participle overleaping, simple past and past participle overleaped or overleapt)

  1. (transitive) To leap over, to jump over, to cross by jumping.
    • Nor hedge, nor ditch, nor hill, nor dale she staies, / But overleapes them all, like Robucke light […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To pass over; to exceed; to omit, leave out.
    • It should be noted that even modest German efforts to overleap the power-political constraints on imperial expansion met with sturdy resistance from the established world powers.2012, Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, Penguin, published 2013, page 141
  3. (dated, reflexive) To make too much effort in leaping; to leap too far.
    • I overleapt myself and stumbled.

Forms of overleap

third-person singular presentoverleaps
present participleoverleaping
past participleoverleaped
pastoverleaped
past participleoverleapt
pastoverleapt
alternative poetico'erleap

Origin of overleap

From Middle English overlepen, from Old English oferhlēapan. Compare Dutch overlopen (“to spill over; overflow”), German überlaufen (“to overrun; overflow”). By surface analysis, over- + leap.

Questions about overleap

What does overleap mean?
Overleap means to leap over, to jump over, to cross by jumping.
What part of speech is overleap?
Overleap is a verb.
How do you pronounce overleap?
Overleap is pronounced /oʊ.vərˈliːp/ (US).
What is the past tense of overleap?
The past tense of overleap is overleaped.

Words near overleap in the dictionary

  1. overlean
  2. overleaned
  3. overleaning
  4. overleans
  5. overleant
  6. overleap
  7. overleaped
  8. overleaping
  9. overleaps
  10. overleapt
  11. overlearn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overleap (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: “overleap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overleap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.