1 (especially BrE) to go past a moving vehicle or person ahead of you because you are going faster than they are:
[VN] He pulled out to overtake a truck. * [V] It's dangerous to overtake on a bend.
2 [VN] to become greater in number, amount or importance than sth else:
In the next century, nuclear energy could overtake oil as the main fuel. * We mustn't let ourselves be overtaken by our competitors. * Quinine has been overtaken by newer drugs.
3 [VN] [oftenpassive] if sth unpleasant overtakes a person, it unexpectedly starts to happen and to affect them:
The climbers were overtaken by bad weather. * Sudden panic overtook her. * Our original plan was overtaken by events (= the situation changed very rapidly) and we had to make a new one.
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for overtake is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does overtake appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — overtake appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
