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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Moneyball
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Masterminds
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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.
What is your overarching goal for these shows?
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 11, 2026
“The one overarching objective for him was to remove sanctions to improve the economy of the Islamic Republic,” said Enrique Mora, the Spanish diplomat who chaired talks on reviving the nuclear deal from 2021.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 23, 2026
“It can be a nice overarching tool that can allow you to kind of simplify your bill-paying,” Schulz said.
From MarketWatch • Feb. 26, 2026
Fueling the selling is an overarching fear that Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or even Alphabet’s Gemini will eventually develop business applications that displace the services provided by many public software companies.
From Barron's • Feb. 11, 2026
It was as if a great, overarching wave had been frozen by one touch of the World Spirit’s finger.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
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.
