Dictionary

bestride en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /bəˈstɹaɪd/ (General-American)
• /bɪˈstɹaɪd/ (General-American)
• audio

Etymology

From Middle English bestriden, from Old English bestrīdan, from Proto-West Germanic *bistrīdan; equivalent to be- + stride. Compare Dutch bestrijden, German bestreiten.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.
   • 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 […] 1885, Richard Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, published by private subscription, Vol. I edition, page 172:
   • […] 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. 1967, Joseph Singer, Elaine Gottlieb, “Chapter 2”, in Farrar, Straus and Giroux, editor, The Manor, New York, translation of original by Isaac Bashevis Singer, part II, page 29:
   • Again I bestride the mitred, leather-winged steed. 1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter VIII, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 71:
   • The knightly Crusader bestrides a war-horse of heavy proportions , which he has suddenly reined in , as he waves on high a flag as a rallying sign for his followers. 1852, The Crystal Palace and Its Contents, page 139:
   • He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road. 1998, Christopher Reich, Numbered Account, New York: Delacorte:
   • 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. 1816, William Wordsworth, Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia, February 1816, lines 27–31:
   • & thou were the truest frende to thy louar that euer bestrade hors "And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse" 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur Book XXI, Chapter xiii, leaf 430v:
   • Apart from the traffic that is originated within its own district, Doncaster is the hub of many important Eastern Region flows. [...] It bestrides busy routes to and from the Midlands and, of course, is a landmark on the East Coast trunk route between north and south. 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 128:
2. (transitive) To stride over, or across.
3. (figuratively, transitive) To dominate.
   • 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. 1962, Ezekiel Mphahlele, “Chapter 5”, in Frederick A. Praeger, editor, The African Image, New York, page 86:
   • Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus[…]. c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Act I Scene II:
   • He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 6, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001:
   • Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy. 1990, Anthony Paul, “Dutch Literature and the Translation Barrier”, in Bart Westerweel, Theo D'haen, editors, Something Understood: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Literary Translation, Amsterdam: Rodopi, page 65:

Forms

Synonyms

straddle

Translations (7)

es ahorcajarse (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · fr chevaucher (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · it cavalcare (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · ota بینمك (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · fi istua hajareisin (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · et selga istuma (to sit with legs on both sides of something) · de rittlings sitzen (to sit with legs on both sides of something)