overreach
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈəʊvə(ˌ)ɹiːt͡ʃ/
ipa: /ˈoʊvə(ɹ)ˌɹit͡ʃ/
Forms: form: overreaches
Etymology: The verb is from Middle English overrechen (“to rise above; to extend beyond or over; to encroach; to catch, overtake; to reach; to obtain wrongfully (?); to take up (a book) to revise it”) [and other forms], equivalent to over- + reach; the noun is derived from the verb or from the phrase to reach over.
Senses: examples: text: It may not be much of a stretch to say that there had always been something comforting about the earlier periods of judicial activism. [...] Ideology aside, one may concede that such Supreme Court activism was far less frightening in its institutional overreach than a wholesale creation of new and public law by the judicial branch would be.
ref: 1997, William P. Kreml, “Warren Critiqued”, in The Constitutional Divide: The Public and Private Sectors in American Law, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 156:
text: [T]hat's something that I think everyone in the White House understood was danger. We thought it was necessary, But I'm sympathetic to folks who looked at it and said, this is looking like potential overreach.
ref: 2010 November 3, Barack Obama, “The President’s News Conference: November 3, 2010”, in Barack Obama: 2010 (In Two Books) (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States), book II (July 1 to December 31, 2010), Washington, D.C.: Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration; United States Government Printing Office, published 2013, →OCLC, page 1723:
text: When American society finally collapses under the combined weight of massive foreign debt, military overreach, and internal decadence, [Gary] North and his followers at Tyler hoped to have a network of churches ready to step into the breach.
ref: 2015, Michael J. McVicar, “American Heretics: Democracy, the Limits of Religion, and the End of Reconstruction”, in Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 186:
text: [Damien] Chazelle and [Josh] Singer acknowledge both the impressive resourcefulness and faintly insane overreach of the space race; they were winging it, attempting the impossible with relatively primitive technology—"Boys making models out of balsa wood," Janet [Shearon Armstrong] calls them, after Director Of Flight Operations Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler) cuts the radio feed during a mission gone wrong.
ref: 2018 October 9, A. A. Dowd, “The Star and Director of La La Land Reunite for First Man’s Spectacular Trip to the Moon”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 23 Apr 2020:
text: Reshaping [of British Railways] was far from perfect. It was tainted by statistical overreach, the unconscious biases of its author, and by the political demands being placed upon the BRB by government.
ref: 2023 March 8, Gareth Dennis, “The Reshaping of things to come...”, in RAIL, number 978, page 49:
glosses: An act of extending or reaching over, especially if too far or too much; overextension.
examples: text: The hunter's [i.e., hunting horse's] legs should be washed with warm water, carefully examined for thorns, overreaches, &c., and the legs should be rubbed dry, and well hand rubbed, by which means a free circulation of the blood will be promoted.
ref: 1833 April, “Teaching the Horse to Leap”, in T. B. Johnson, editor, The Sportsman’s Cabinet, and Town and Country Magazine, volume I, number 6, London: Published by Sherwood, Gilbert, & Piper, […], →OCLC, page 424:
text: Overreach.—This unpleasant noise, known also by the terms ‘clicking’, ‘overreach’, &c., arises from the toe of the hind foot knocking against the shoe of the fore foot.
ref: 1833 October, “Art. LXVI.—The Vices, and Disagreeable or Dangerous Habits of the Horse. [From the Library of Useful Knowledge.]”, in John D. Legare, editor, The Southern Agriculturist, and Register of Rural Affairs; […], volume VI, number 10, Charleston, S.C.: Printed and published for the editor, by A. E. Miller, […], →OCLC, part II (Selections), page 547:
topics: equestrianism
hobbies
horses
lifestyle
pets
sports
glosses: Of a horse: an act of striking the heel of a forefoot with the toe of a hindfoot; an injury caused by this action.
Derived terms: overreach boot