Pronunciation Verb
bestride (bestrides, present participle bestriding; past bestrode, past participle bestrode)
- (transitive) To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.
- 1816, William Wordsworth, "Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia, February 1816" lines 27-31,
- But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind, / Which from Siberian caves the monarch freed, / And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind, / And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride, / And to the battle ride.
- 1885, Richard Burton (translator), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, published by private subscription, Vol. I, p. 172,
- He threw in my way a piece of timber which I bestrided, and the waves tossed me to and fro till they cast me upon an island coast […]
- 1967, Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Manor, translated by Joseph Singer and Elaine Gottlieb, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Chapter 2, part II, p. 29,
- […] she would take the betrothal document from her father's chest of drawers and pore over the signature: Ezriel Babad. […] His signature seemed to bestride her own.
- 1998, Christopher Reich, Numbered Account, New York: Delacorte,
- He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road.
- 1816, William Wordsworth, "Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia, February 1816" lines 27-31,
- (transitive) To stride over, or across.
- (transitive, figuratively) To dominate.
- 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 6,
- He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!
- 1962, Ezekiel Mphahlele, The African Image, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Chapter 5, p. 86,
- You see, Jim Crow does it differently in Africa. His is a slow but tight and deadly squeeze. […] He bestrides this continent from Algiers to Cape Town, and the guns around his belt face east, west, south and north.
- 1990, Anthony Paul, "Dutch Literature and the Translation Barrier" in Bart Westerweel and Theo D'haen (eds.), Something Understood: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Literary Translation, Amsterdam: Rodopi, p. 65,
- Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy.
- 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 6,
- French: chevaucher
- German: rittlings sitzen
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