OVERBOARD

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does overboard mean? 

• OVERBOARD (adverb)
  The adverb OVERBOARD has 2 senses:

1. to extremes

2. from on board a vessel into the water

  Familiarity information: OVERBOARD used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OVERBOARD (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

To extremes

Context example:

he went overboard to please his in-laws

Sense 2

Meaning:

From on board a vessel into the water

Context example:

they dropped their garbage overboard

 Context examples 

Prendergast was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children and threw them overboard alive or dead.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You must have been overboard, sir.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A water party; and by some accident she was falling overboard.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

But rather than being a good thing, the brain goes overboard with the clearing, and starts to harm itself instead.

(Lack of Sleep Makes Brain to Literally Eat Itself, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

I dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for I was near overboard.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I am not sure where your luck will come from, but if you are lucky you need not go overboard.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

It was given out that he had either thrown himself overboard or fallen overboard in the heavy weather that we were having.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

God forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

As it was, he found Spencer's explanation of things convincing; and, as he phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

These rogues, whom I had picked up, debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship, and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin, and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I offered to stir.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)