give over
Britishverb
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(tr) to transfer, esp to the care or custody of another
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(tr) to assign or resign to a specific purpose or function
the day was given over to pleasure
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informal to cease (an activity)
give over fighting, will you!
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Hand over, entrust, as in They gave over all the papers to the library . [Late 1400s]
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Also, give oneself over . Devote or surrender to a particular purpose or use, as in The whole day was given over to merrymaking , or He gave himself over to grief . [Late 1400s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“He wants me to give over everything I have. He says he knows a man who just got out of prison who can help win his freedom. But can we trust him? I’ve never seen this man! Yet I am to give him everything?”
From Literature
It said that Mr. Maroney would send a friend of his, disguised as a book peddler, to call on the sister’s house this evening, and that Mrs. Maroney was to give over everything to him.
From Literature
There’s so much trauma and, “But what if I did just give over to something.”
From Los Angeles Times
So there’s all of these reasons he can’t give over to anything.
From Los Angeles Times
His plan — which Starr notes “might have been a cover for a London company anxious to acquire land” — was for Mexico to give over as much as 20,000 square miles of land in Mexican California to settle about 15,000 Irish Catholic families.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
