overarching
Americanadjective
-
forming an arch above.
great trees with overarching branches.
-
encompassing or overshadowing everything.
The community's overarching needs are more jobs and better housing.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of overarching
Explanation
When something is overarching, it affects or includes everything. While your novel touches on a lot of subjects and ideas, its overarching theme is the importance of friendship. When it's used figuratively, this adjective describes a quality that influences every single part of something. You can say that your club's overarching interest is the outdoors, or that the overarching goal of your school is to give everyone a solid STEM education. Overarching also literally means "forming an arch shape over something," like the overarching grape vines you pass beneath to enter your friend's garden.
Vocabulary lists containing overarching
Life of Pi
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Masterminds
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Moneyball
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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.
The overarching problem for Nvidia is that its deals concentrate the risk it is taking on AI.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
It could correlate that way, but there’s no overarching purposeful use of it.”
From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2026
The AI labs’ overarching goal is to build an AI model generally capable of doing all cognitive work that a human does.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
Such overarching public sentiment inspired Johnson to pen a 700-word essay on why that mindset was the “most interesting phenomenon happening on earth right now.”
From Slate ● Jul. 31, 2026
As might be expected, the answer the various participants gave to such an overarching question depended a great deal on the ground on which they were standing.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
