oversweepingadj.
/ˌəʊvəˈswiːpɪŋ/, U.S. /ˌoʊvərˈswipɪŋ/ Now rare.
1. That sweeps over or across.
ΚΠ
1833 E. S. Wortley Poems 265 Realms..Where never rolled the o'ersweeping tide of night.
1844 F. H. Doyle Two Destinies 3 White o'ersweeping waves efface A footmark planted on the shore.
1856 E. A. Allen Forest Buds 18 Lightly I swung from an o'er-sweeping vine.
1907 K. Trask Night & Morning 6 The oversweeping tide of a great Love.
1911 J. Muir My First Summer in Sierra 322 Their forms..approximately seem to be the forms of greatest strength with reference to the stress of oversweeping, past-sweeping, down-grinding ice-streams.
2. Excessively sweeping.
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1946 Science 7 June 696/1 The chief adverse criticism that might be offered..is that oversweeping claims are made for the specificity of the fuchsin-dye method for the identification of [etc.].
1990 Arkansas Democrat-Gaz. (Nexis) 27 June There are some oversweeping statements of being not that harmful to humans, which are contradicted in the text when we examine the data carefully.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2004; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1833- fall in hate
- fall in hate with
- fall in leak
- fall in line
- fall in love
- fall in mould
- fall in on itself
- fall in one's way
- fall in planets
- fall in powder
- fall in rage
- fall in staves
- fall in step
- fall in the lot of
- fall in the lot of a person
- fall in two
- fall in with
- fall indian
- fall into
- fall into a booby trap
- fall into a misfortune
- fall into a passion
- fall into a person's eye
- fall into bits
- fall into chime with