Word.ws English Dictionary

overshadowed

overshadowed is the past participle of overshadow.

Meaning of overshadow

Verb

overshadow (third-person singular simple present overshadows, present participle overshadowing, simple past and past participle overshadowed)

  1. (transitive) To obscure something by casting a shadow.
    • While he thus ſpake, there came a cloud, and ouerſhadowed them, ⁊ they feared, as they entred into the cloude.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 9:34
  2. (transitive) To dominate something and make it seem insignificant.
    • A branch of rail transport that seems to been rather neglected by historians is that concerned with cliff railways, of which a fair number exist in Great Britain. This is probably because these lines are overshadowed by the more spectacular funicular railways in Switzerland and other mountainous...1951 August, P. W. Gentry, “Cliff Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 514
  3. (transitive) To shelter or protect.

Adjective

overshadowed

  1. superseded by, covered up by, overtaken or eclipsed

Questions about overshadowed

What does overshadowed mean?
Overshadowed means superseded by, covered up by, overtaken or eclipsed.
What is overshadowed the past participle of?
Overshadowed is the past participle of overshadow.
What part of speech is overshadowed?
Overshadowed is an adjective.

Words near overshadowed in the dictionary

  1. overshade
  2. overshaded
  3. overshades
  4. overshading
  5. overshadow
  6. overshadowed
  7. overshadower
  8. overshadowers
  9. overshadowest
  10. overshadoweth
  11. overshadowing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overshadowed (page history and authors); overshadow (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: “overshadowed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overshadowed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.