OVERGROW (overgrew, overgrown)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: overgrew    , overgrown   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does overgrow mean? 

• OVERGROW (verb)
  The verb OVERGROW has 3 senses:

1. grow too large

2. become overgrown

3. grow beyond or across

  Familiarity information: OVERGROW used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OVERGROW (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they overgrow    ... he / she / it overgrows   
Past simple: overgrew   
Past participle: overgrown   
-ing form: overgrowing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Grow too large

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "overgrow" is one way to...):

exceed; surpass; transcend (be greater in scope or size than some standard)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sense 2

Meaning:

Become overgrown

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Context example:

The patio overgrew with ivy

Hypernyms (to "overgrow" is one way to...):

change state; turn (undergo a transformation or a change of position or action)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sense 3

Meaning:

Grow beyond or across

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

grow over; overgrow

Context example:

The ivy overgrew the patio

Hypernyms (to "overgrow" is one way to...):

grow (become larger, greater, or bigger; expand or gain)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

 Context examples 

Out of the tangled scrub on the old overgrown barrow two human faces were looking out at him; the sinking sun glimmered full upon them, showing up every line and feature.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A disease in which the alveoli (tiny air sacs at the end of the bronchioles in the lungs) are overgrown with fibrous tissue.

(Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, NCI Dictionary)

Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can remember how it ran.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in —shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But, by these ten finger-bones! it is a passing strange thing to me to think that it was but in the last fall of the leaf that we walked from Lyndhurst together, he so gentle and maidenly, and you, John, like a great red-limbed overgrown moon-calf; and now here you are as sprack a squire and as lusty an archer as ever passed down the highway from Bordeaux, while I am still the same old Samkin Aylward, with never a change, save that I have a few more sins on my soul and a few less crowns in my pouch.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day's sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)