How to use bestride in a sentence

11 example sentences · verb

Bestride means to be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse. Example: “I bestrode the courtroom entranceway, holding forth on my merits to the assembled press.”

Examples of bestride by meaning

verbTo be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.

Again I bestride the mitred, leather-winged steed.1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter VIII, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 71
He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road.1998, Christopher Reich, Numbered Account, New York: Delacorte

verbTo dominate.

The colossus that bestrode the world!1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 6, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC...
Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy.1990, Anthony Paul, “Dutch Literature and the Translation Barrier”, in Bart Westerweel, Theo D'haen, editors, Something Understood: Studies...

More sentences with bestride

I bestrode the courtroom entranceway, holding forth on my merits to the assembled press.From the entry hold forth
He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable.December 13 2021, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from…. From the entry live-tweet
All that talk of one superpower -- us -- bestriding a "unipolar" world seems as dated as Seinfeld reruns.2031 August 12, Michael Kinsley, “The Bush Presidency, Eight Years Later”, in Time, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2009. From the entry unipolar
Unsteadily a rustic bridge bestrode its dark waters, a rustic humpbacked bridge, in a state of extreme dilapidation.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC. From the entry humpbacked
While their great canoes, carrying many cannon, span the whale's way, their warriors bestride our land and their settlers plant behind them.2013, M.J. Burr, End of Honour, eBook Partnership, page 28. From the entry whale's way
But the supreme horror comes from the Mitch of Timothy Carhart, who seems to bestride — or bestagger — a stage for the first time.1992 April 27, New York Magazine, page 83. From the entry bestagger
Within, among the bric-a-brac and furbelows, he found Miss Painter seated in a redundant purple armchair with the incongruous air of a horseman bestriding a heavy mount.1912, Edith Wharton, The Reef, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company. From the entry furbelow

Meaning of bestride

verb To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.
verb To stride over, or across.
verb To dominate.

Full definition of bestride

Questions about bestride in a sentence

How do you use bestride in a sentence?: Bestride is used as a verb. For example: “I bestrode the courtroom entranceway, holding forth on my merits to the assembled press.”
What is a short sentence with bestride?: “The colossus that bestrode the world!”
What does bestride mean?: Bestride means to be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bestride (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use bestride in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/bestride. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.