SPREAD OVER

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Form a cover over

Example:

The grass covered the grave

Synonyms:

cover; spread over

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "spread over" is one way to...):

adjoin; contact; meet; touch (be in direct physical contact with; make contact)

Verb group:

cover (provide with a covering or cause to be covered)

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

flood (cover with liquid, usually water)

bloody (cover with blood)

mist; mist over (become covered with mist)

glaciate (cover with ice or snow or a glacier)

strew (cover; be dispersed over)

grass; grass over (cover with grass)

cake; coat (form a coat over)

drown; overwhelm; submerge (cover completely or make imperceptible)

mantle (cover like a mantle)

cloak; clothe; drape; robe (cover as if with clothing)

blanket (form a blanket-like cover (over))

carpet (form a carpet-like cover (over))

smother (form an impenetrable cover over)

shroud (form a cover like a shroud)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Credits

Context examples:

That evening Jo forgot to barricade her corner, and had not been in her seat five minutes, before a massive form appeared beside her, and with both arms spread over the sofa back, both long legs stretched out before him, Laurie exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least, must feel with Lady Bertram that she was out of luck in having such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath, occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest part of a page of her own.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I told him “we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong liquors, without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented digestion; that prostitute female Yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those who fell into their embraces; that this, and many other diseases, were propagated from father to son; so that great numbers came into the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human bodies, for they would not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint—in short, every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated to itself. To remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us in the profession, or pretence, of curing the sick. And because I had some skill in the faculty, I would, in gratitude to his honour, let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed.

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

I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title: Rasselas looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A dark mass spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire; and then He moved the mist to the right and left, and I could see that there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red—like His, only smaller.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)