Word.ws English Dictionary

oversweeping

Syllables: o·ver·sweep·ing/ˌəʊvəˈswiːpɪŋ/

oversweeping is the present participle and gerund of oversweep.

Meaning of oversweep

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

Adjective

oversweeping (comparative more oversweeping, superlative most oversweeping)

  1. (rare) Overly sweeping.
    • Now, hearing the man made conreate by that virile voice, her whole nature roused to defiance and to an oversweeping desire to see him face to face.1913, G. B Lancaster, The Law-bringers, Hodder and Stoughton, page 58
    • In this low portion there is here and there a rounded upswelling of more resist ing rock, with trends, all telling the same story of a vast oversweeping ice-flood from the north.1918, John Muir, William Frederic Bodè, The Cruise of the Corwin: /journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881 in Search of De Long and the Jeannette, Houghton Mifflin Company, page 113

Forms of oversweeping

comparativemore oversweeping
superlativemost oversweeping

Origin of oversweeping

From over- + sweeping.

Questions about oversweeping

What does oversweeping mean?
Oversweeping means overly sweeping.
What is oversweeping the present participle and gerund of?
Oversweeping is the present participle and gerund of oversweep.
What part of speech is oversweeping?
Oversweeping is an adjective.
How do you pronounce oversweeping?
Oversweeping is pronounced /ˌəʊvəˈswiːpɪŋ/.

Words near oversweeping in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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