overgang

present singular third person overgangs · participle present overganging · participle past overganged · past overganged

1. dialectalobsoletetransitiveTo go beyond or above; to exceed.

   But at the last it will overgang, Suppose that many think it lang.

   c. 1650, unknown author, Eger and Grime

   3 more examples

   Ye're straight and tall, handsome withall, But your pride overgangs your wit

   c. 1600, unknown author, Proud Lady Margaret

   "The trouble is overganging the profit. Read us one o' King David's psalms or canticles, then we'll go to our sleep wi' a song in our hearts."

   1917, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Christine, a Fife fisher girl, page 21

   Less dramatically, but packed with economic menace, Elizabeth Bathgate told George Sprot, 'for work what you can your teeth shall overgang your hands and ye shall never get your Sundays meat to the fore.'

   1981, Christina Larner, Enemies of God: the witch-hunt in Scotland, page 97

plural overgangs

1. dialectalobsoleteSomething that goes across or over; a transition.

   Sometimes we can put our finger direct on the overgang.

   1883, George Stephens, Prof: S. Bugge's studies on Northern mythology shortly examined

   3 more examples

   … all such udall lands, quoy lands, and others, as was evictit frae them be his Lordship's courts of perambulation, and overgangs, holden upon the lands of the same and divers places thereof, mentioned most specially in his Lordship's court-books, he renounced the same accordingly.

   1587, Lord Robert of Orkney, "A renunciation" quoted in Notes on Orkney and Zetland, Alexander Peterkin, page 127

   [...] the preservation of adequate or established footpaths, the creation of new stiles or overgangs, in aid of the same object, in the fences required in the process of inclosure, and so forth.

   1892, Quarter Sessions Records of the Peace (Yorkshire North Riding), volume 9, page 249

   Its palmbranch logo - "the earliest Christian symbol of triumph over death - and the "still half-Scandian dialect in 12 lines of stave-rime verse" all "announce the overgang from heathendom."

   1990, Dolores Warwick Frese, “Wulf and Eadwacer: The Adulterous Woman Reconsidered”, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, page 283