overpass

plural overpasses · alternative poetic o'erpass

1. CanadaPhilippinesUSA section of a road or path that crosses over an obstacle, especially another road, railway, etc.

   The homeless man had built a little shelter, complete with cook-stove, beneath a concrete overpass.

   1 more example

   By visible evidence, this Saturday morning is a comparatively placid one. Earlier in the week a young man had died after being stabbed in a flat, and from the overpass at Archway Road, darkly referred to as “suicide bridge,” another man had jumped to his death.

   2018 February, Robert Draper, “They are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet: Technology and Our Increasing Demand for Security have Put Us All under Surveillance. Is Privacy Becoming just a Memory?”, in National Geographic, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 Jun 2018

   Synonyms: flyover

present singular third person overpasses · participle present overpassing · participle past overpassed · past overpassed · alternative poetic o'erpass

1. CanadaPhilippinesUSTo pass above something, as when flying or moving on a higher road.

   Gillian watched the overpassing shoppers on the second floor of the mall, as she relaxed in the bench on the ground floor.

   Synonyms: pass over, transpass

2. CanadaPhilippinesUStransitiveTo exceed, overstep, or transcend a limit, threshold, or goal.

   The precocious student had really overpassed her peers, and was reading books written for children several years older.

   3 more examples

   Marshall was really overpassing his authority when he ordered the security guards to fire their tasers at the trespassers.

   Thou who didst fling on Troia's every tower / The o'er-roofing snare, that neither great thing might, / Nor any of the young ones, overpass / Captivity's great sweep-net— […]

   1877, Æschylus, translated by Robert Browning, The Agamemnon of Æschylus, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 31

   For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubled themselves about such things; it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never a slave’s nightmare or an insolent boast: and at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality, that grander styles have never overpassed: […]

   [1878], William Morris, The Decorative Arts: Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress […], London: Ellis and White, […], →OCLC, page 21

   Synonyms: overgo

3. CanadaPhilippinesUStransitiveTo disregard, skip, or miss something.

   A youth, how all the beauties of the East / He slightly viewed and slightly overpassed.

   1671, John Milton, “(please specify the page)”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, lines 197–198

   Synonyms: misregard