Overlay

How to spell overlay

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overlay

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overlay mean?

1. nounA layer, sheet, or graphic placed on top of something else.
2. verbTo place or spread one thing over the surface of another, often as a covering layer.

Overlay in a sentence

• verb

  The designer chose to overlay the photo with a faint company logo.

• noun

  A transparent overlay showed the proposed extension over the floor plan.

• verb

  The builders will overlay the old floor with a thin sheet of plywood.

• noun

  The menu screen has a settings overlay that appears across the video.

Where does overlay come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound built entirely from native English material: the prefix over-, meaning 'above' or 'on top of', joined to the verb 'lay', meaning 'to place or set down'. Both halves descend from Old English, where 'ofer' meant 'above' and 'lecgan' meant 'to lay'; the Germanic ancestors of these words are shared across Dutch and German, which still have closely matching forms. An older verb 'oferlecgan' existed in Old English with the sense of laying one thing across another, and the modern form re-emerged in late Middle English. Over the centuries the word gathered practical senses, from covering a surface with gold or another material to the modern technical use of a transparent sheet or digital layer placed on top of an image or map. Because every part of the word is ordinary English, the spelling is regular, with the only mild snag being the unstressed middle vowel of 'over'.

How the word is built

• over- (above, on top of)
• lay (to place or put down)