overran

Overran is the simple past tense of the verb overrun. It denotes the action of spreading over and occupying a space beyond its normal bounds, or of overwhelming a place, group, or system. The term is used for military conquest, ecological or biological invasion, and situations in which capacity or control is exceeded, such as a flood, crowd, or backlog.

Etymology: The form derives from the prefix over- combined with run. The compound overrun has been in English since the early modern period, and overran serves as its regular past tense; the past participle remains overrun.

Usage: In historical or descriptive writing, it can describe forces that breach defenses: The army overran the city. It can describe rapid, extensive spread, such as a field overrun by weeds, an island overrun by pests, or a region overrun by refugees. In other domains, the idea of exceeding capacity is expressed as being overrun or overwhelmed, with phrases like “the system was overrun” or “the backlog was overrun.” The term is usually transitive and active, but is frequently used in passive constructions as well.

See also: overrun (verb), invasion, overpopulation, overcapacity.

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