Overtake

How to spell overtake

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overtake

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overtake mean?

1. verbTo catch up with and move past someone or something travelling ahead.
2. verbTo become greater than something else, especially in quantity, rank, or progress.
3. verbOf an emotion, event, or condition: to seize or affect someone abruptly.

Overtake in a sentence

• It is dangerous to overtake on a blind bend.

• Online sales are expected to overtake shop sales this year.

• A wave of exhaustion can overtake you after a long flight.

• The runner used the final lap to overtake two rivals.

• Younger firms can quickly overtake slow established brands.

• Panic threatened to overtake her before the interview.

Where does overtake come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from the native English prefix 'over-', meaning 'beyond' or 'past', joined to the verb 'take'. The 'over-' element descends from Old English 'ofer', a thoroughly Germanic word for something positioned above or moving past. The verb 'take' is interesting because, although it feels deeply English, it was actually borrowed from Old Norse 'taka', meaning 'to grasp' or 'seize', a word the Vikings left behind that gradually pushed out the older native verb 'niman'. Put together, 'overtake' literally pictures one mover going past another, and it appears in English from the 1200s and 1300s with the senses of catching up and passing, and of a feeling or misfortune suddenly seizing a person. The spelling is mercifully regular: it is simply 'over' plus 'take', with the silent 'e' borrowed straight from 'take'.

How the word is built

• over- (beyond, past)
• take (from Old Norse taka: to grasp, seize)