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From Middle English overriden, equivalent to over- +‎ ride. Cognate with Dutch overrijden, German überreiten, Danish override.



override ‎(third-person singular simple present overrides, present participle overriding, simple past overrode, past participle overridden)

  1. To ride across or beyond something.
  2. To ride a horse too hard.
  3. To counteract the normal operation of something.
    The Congress promptly overrode the president's veto, passing the bill into law.
  4. (object-oriented programming) To define a new behaviour of a method by creating the same method of the superclass with the same name and signature.
    How the cat runs is defined in the method run() of the class Cat, which overrides the same method with the same signature of superclass called Mammal.

Usage notes[edit]

  • The form overrode is sometimes used as a past participle, in place of the standard overridden.

See also[edit]



override ‎(plural overrides)

  1. A mechanism, device or procedure used to counteract an automatic control.
  2. A royalty.
  3. A device for prioritizing audio signals, such that certain signals receive priority over others.