Word.ws English Dictionary

oversweep

oversweep verb: to sweep over; to cover by sweeping.

Verb

oversweep (third-person singular simple present oversweeps, present participle oversweeping, simple past and past participle overswept)

  1. (transitive) To sweep over; to cover by sweeping.
    • Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them
      And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,
      And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them
      Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets
      That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.1817, John Keats, I stood tip-toe upon a little hill

Forms of oversweep

third-person singular presentoversweeps
present participleoversweeping
past participleoverswept
pastoverswept

Origin of oversweep

From over- + sweep.

Questions about oversweep

What does oversweep mean?
Oversweep means to sweep over; to cover by sweeping.
What part of speech is oversweep?
Oversweep is a verb.
What is the past tense of oversweep?
The past tense of oversweep is overswept.

Words near oversweep in the dictionary

  1. overswears
  2. oversweat
  3. oversweated
  4. oversweating
  5. oversweats
  6. oversweep
  7. oversweeping
  8. oversweeps
  9. oversweet
  10. oversweeten
  11. oversweetened

Source and license

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