bestride
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /bɪˈstɹaɪd/
ipa: /bəˈstɹaɪd/
rhymes: -aɪd
Forms: form: bestrides
form: bestriding
form: bestrode
form: bestrode
form: bestridden
form: bestrid
Etymology: From Middle English bestriden, from Old English bestrīdan, from Proto-West Germanic *bistrīdan; equivalent to be- + stride. Compare Dutch bestrijden, German bestreiten.
Senses: examples: text: & thou were the truest frende to thy louar that euer bestrade hors
"And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse"
ref: 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur Book XXI, Chapter xiii, leaf 430v:
text: But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind, / Which from Siberian caves the monarch freed, / And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind, / And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride, / And to the battle ride.
ref: 1816, William Wordsworth, Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia, February 1816, lines 27–31:
text: The knightly Crusader bestrides a war-horse of heavy proportions , which he has suddenly reined in , as he waves on high a flag as a rallying sign for his followers.
ref: 1852, The Crystal Palace and Its Contents, page 139:
text: He threw in my way a piece of timber which I bestrided, and the waves tossed me to and fro till they cast me upon an island coast […]
ref: 1885, Richard Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, published by private subscription, Vol. I edition, page 172:
text: Apart from the traffic that is originated within its own district, Doncaster is the hub of many important Eastern Region flows. [...] It bestrides busy routes to and from the Midlands and, of course, is a landmark on the East Coast trunk route between north and south.
ref: 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 128:
text: […] she would take the betrothal document from her father's chest of drawers and pore over the signature: Ezriel Babad. […] His signature seemed to bestride her own.
ref: 1967, Joseph Singer, Elaine Gottlieb, “Chapter 2”, in Farrar, Straus and Giroux, editor, The Manor, New York, translation of original by Isaac Bashevis Singer, part II, page 29:
text: Again I bestride the mitred, leather-winged steed.
ref: 1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter VIII, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 71:
text: He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road.
ref: 1998, Christopher Reich, Numbered Account, New York: Delacorte:
synonyms: straddle
glosses: To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.
glosses: To stride over, or across.
examples: text: Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus[…].
ref: c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Act I Scene II:
text: He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!
ref: 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 6, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001:
text: You see, Jim Crow does it differently in Africa. His is a slow but tight and deadly squeeze. […] He bestrides this continent from Algiers to Cape Town, and the guns around his belt face east, west, south and north.
ref: 1962, Ezekiel Mphahlele, “Chapter 5”, in Frederick A. Praeger, editor, The African Image, New York, page 86:
text: Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy.
ref: 1990, Anthony Paul, “Dutch Literature and the Translation Barrier”, in Bart Westerweel, Theo D'haen, editors, Something Understood: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Literary Translation, Amsterdam: Rodopi, page 65:
glosses: To dominate.