Overset
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /əʊvəˈsɛt/
Origin
From Middle English oversetten ("to set over, upset"), from Old English ofersettan ("to set over, conquer, overcome"), corresponding to - + set, from Proto-Germanic *uber ("over") + *satjaną ("to set"). Compare Dutch overzetten ("to ferry, transport, translate"), German übersetzen ("to cross over, translate").
Full definition of overset
Verb
- (obsolete) To set over (something); to cover.
- (intransitive) To turn, or to be turned, over; to be upset.
- (obsolete) To overwhelm; to overthrow, defeat.
- To physically disturb (someone); to make nauseous, upset.
- To knock over, capsize, overturn.
- 1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, II.104:A reef between them also now began
To show its boiling surf and bounding spray,
But finding no place for their landing better,
They ran the boat for shore,—and overset her. - (now rare) To unbalance (a situation, state etc.); to confuse, to put into disarray.
- 1843, Thomas_Carlyle, , book 3, chapter XIII, DemocracyThus has the Tailor-art, so to speak, overset itself, like most other things; changed its centre-of-gravity; whirled suddenly over from zenith to nadir.
- 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial 2007, p. 152:‘So this is the creature who oversets the household and suborns servants and clergymen,’ d'Anton said.
- (printing) to set (type or copy) in excess of what is needed; to set too much type for a given space.
- (transitive) To translate.
- 1879, The Saturday magazine - Volume 1 - Page 87:Overset into English, after the spirits and measures of the anthentical; by Dr. Heinrich Krauss, Ph.D., and so wider.
- 1910, Leonard Bacon, Joseph Parrish Thompson, Henry Ward Beecher, The Independent - Volume 69 - Page 1220:They should be overset into English so as to reach a wider public here, for even his elementary descriptions of American universities, would not be so superfluous to any of us as we think, ...
- 2006, John David Pizer, The idea of world literature:The thought and its expression—these are the two factors which must solve the problem; and it matters not how much we translate or overset—as the Germans felicitously say—so long as we go no deeper and do not grasp at what all literatures have in common.
- To overfill.