Overland

How to spell overland

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overland

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overland mean?

1. adverbBy or across land, rather than by sea or air.
2. adjectiveRelating to or carried out on a route across land.

Overland in a sentence

• adverb

  The cargo travelled overland from the port to the warehouse.

• adjective

  The company offered a cheaper overland delivery option for bulky goods.

• adverb

  Rather than fly, they chose to go overland through three countries.

• adjective

  Their overland trek across the desert took careful planning.

Where does overland come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound, built from two very old Germanic words: 'over', which descends from Old English 'ofer' meaning 'above' or 'across', and 'land', from Old English 'land' meaning 'ground' or 'country'. Both halves trace back to the same Proto-Germanic stock that gave German 'über' and 'Land', and they have stayed remarkably stable in spelling for more than a thousand years. The compound came together to describe movement made 'across the land' rather than by sea or air, a useful distinction in an age when long journeys often forced a choice between an overland route and a sea passage. By the seventeenth century it was firmly established as both an adjective and an adverb, and the word later picked up specialised uses, such as the Australian sense of driving livestock long distances by land. Because each part is a familiar everyday word, the only real spelling question is remembering that it is written as one solid word, with no space and a single shared 'l'.

How the word is built

• over- (across, over)
• land (ground, country)