Overthrown

How to spell overthrown

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overthrown

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overthrown mean?

1. verbRemoved from power, defeated, or brought down by force, as the past participle of overthrow.

Overthrown in a sentence

• The corrupt regime was overthrown within a single week.

• By dawn the elected government had been overthrown in a military coup.

Where does overthrown come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past participle of the verb 'overthrow', a compound formed entirely from native English elements rather than borrowed roots. The first part, 'over', comes from the Old English 'ofer', meaning 'above' or 'beyond', and it adds the sense of toppling or upending. The second part descends from the Old English verb 'thrawan', which originally meant 'to twist' or 'to turn', and only later settled into the modern sense of hurling or casting something down. By the time the compound 'overthrow' appears in Middle English, around the 1300s, it carried the figurative meaning of casting a person or power down from a position, which is the dominant sense today. The spelling keeps the irregular strong-verb participle ending '-n' (throw, threw, thrown), so the trap is remembering that final '-n' rather than writing 'overthrowed'.

How the word is built

• over- (above, beyond)
• throw (Old English thrawan: to twist, hurl)
• -n (past participle ending)