OVERSHADOW

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does overshadow mean? 

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

1. be greater in significance than

2. make appear small by comparison

3. cast a shadow upon

  Familiarity information: OVERSHADOW used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OVERSHADOW (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they overshadow    ... he / she / it overshadows   
Past simple: overshadowed   
Past participle: overshadowed   
-ing form: overshadowing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be greater in significance than

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

dominate; eclipse; overshadow

Context example:

the tragedy overshadowed the couple's happiness

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

brood; bulk large; hover; loom (hang over, as of something threatening, dark, or menacing)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Make appear small by comparison

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

dwarf; overshadow; shadow

Context example:

This year's debt dwarfs that of last year

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

command; dominate; overlook; overtop (look down on)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Sense 3

Meaning:

Cast a shadow upon

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Context example:

The tall tree overshadowed the house

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

becloud; befog; cloud; fog; haze over; mist; obnubilate; obscure (make less visible or unclear)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "overshadow"):

eclipse; occult (cause an eclipse of (a celestial body) by intervention)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

 Context examples 

My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But for galaxy NGC 1600, the giant black hole’s mass far overshadows the mass of its relatively sparse bulge.

(Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place, NASA)

“Oh, Trot!” she said again; “blind, blind!” and without knowing why, I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus:—From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As the youngster of the party, not merely in years, but in experience, character, knowledge, and all that goes to make a man, I had been overshadowed from the first.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From their pious oasis they looked dreamily out at the desert of life, a place full of stormings and strivings—comfortless, restless, and overshadowed by evil.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That night—the night that I read his terror—I put my arms round him and I implored him by his love for me and by all that he held dear to hold nothing from me, and to tell me why this huge man overshadowed him so.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world and art and life that she could never hope to possess.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Lord John had been gazing curiously at a great tree-fern which overshadowed the encampment.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this chamber.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)