overpass

noun

1. (Canada, Philippines, US)A section of a road or path that crosses over an obstacle, especially another road, railway, etc.

   “The homeless man had built a little shelter, complete with cook-stove, beneath a concrete overpass.”

   “By visible evidence, this Saturday morning is a comparatively placid one. Earlier in the week a young man had died after being stabbed in a flat, and from the overpass at Archway Road, darkly referred to as “suicide bridge,” another man had jumped to his death.”

verb

1. (Canada, Philippines, US)To pass above something, as when flying or moving on a higher road.

   “Gillian watched the overpassing shoppers on the second floor of the mall, as she relaxed in the bench on the ground floor.”

2. (Canada, Philippines, US, transitive)To exceed, overstep, or transcend a limit, threshold, or goal.

   “Marshall was really overpassing his authority when he ordered the security guards to fire their tasers at the trespassers.”

   “The precocious student had really overpassed her peers, and was reading books written for children several years older.”

   “Thou who didst fling on Troia's every tower / The o'er-roofing snare, that neither great thing might, / Nor any of the young ones, overpass / Captivity's great sweep-net— […]”

   “For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubled themselves about such things; it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never a slave’s nightmare or an insolent boast: and at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality, that grander styles have never overpassed: […]”

3. (Canada, Philippines, US, transitive)To disregard, skip, or miss something.

   “A youth, how all the beauties of the East / He slightly viewed and slightly overpassed.”