Word.ws English Dictionary

overriding

/ˌəʊvə(ɹ)ˈɹaɪdɪŋ/

overriding is the present participle and gerund of override.

Meaning of override

Verb

override (third-person singular simple present overrides, present participle overriding, simple past overrode, past participle overridden)

  1. (transitive) To ride across or beyond something.
    • Around 50 people were evacuated from a rush-hour London Overground service on October 12, after an eight-car train overrode the buffers at Enfield Town station.2021 October 20, “Network News: Commuter train crashes into buffers at Enfield Town”, in RAIL, number 942, page 8
  2. (transitive) To ride over the top of something, usually forcibly.
    • Separation of the caboose from the VAN train had caused the train to go into emergency braking and when Extra 3119 West struck the third rack car, the car overrode the locomotive, destroyed the remaining superstructure, and caused the locomotive to overturn the north rail. The near-instantaneous...1981 August 18, National Transportation Safety Board, “Collision and Derailment”, in Railroad Accident Report: Rear-End Collision of Union Pacific Railroad Company Freight Trains Extra 3119 West and...
  3. (transitive) To ride a horse too hard.
  4. (intransitive, transitive) To counteract the normal operation of something; to countermand with orders of higher priority.
    • In automotive design, safety should override lesser factors such as cosmetics and corner-cutting.
  5. (transitive) To give commands of a higher priority to an automated system; to take manual control of an automated system
    • Manual controls allow the user to override the camera's default settings.
  6. (transitive, object-oriented programming) To define a new behaviour of a method by creating the same method of the superclass with the same name and signature.
    • How the cat runs is defined in the method run() of the class Cat, which overrides the same method with the same signature of superclass called Mammal.

See all 10 meanings of override

Noun

overriding (plural overridings)

  1. The act or process by which something is overridden.

Adjective

overriding (comparative more overriding, superlative most overriding)

  1. Superior, of supreme importance in the case.
    • Our overriding concern is the safety of the children.
    • The overriding fact of our lives, the shadow that determined everything we did or did not do or longed to do, was poverty.1986, Reginald Shepherd, “On Not Being White”, in Joseph Beam, editor, In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology, page 50

Forms of overriding

Noun
pluraloverridings
Adjective
comparativemore overriding
superlativemost overriding

Words formed from overriding

Phrases with overriding

Words that rhyme with overriding

31 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about overriding

What does overriding mean?
Overriding means the act or process by which something is overridden.
What is overriding the present participle and gerund of?
Overriding is the present participle and gerund of override.
What part of speech is overriding?
Overriding can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce overriding?
Overriding is pronounced /ˌəʊvə(ɹ)ˈɹaɪdɪŋ/.
What is the plural of overriding?
The plural of overriding is overridings.

Words near overriding in the dictionary

  1. overriden
  2. overrider
  3. overriders
  4. overrides
  5. overrides one's commission
  6. overriding
  7. overriding one's commission
  8. overridingly
  9. overridingness
  10. overridings
  11. overrife

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overriding (page history and authors); override (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-overriding.wav.

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