English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əʊvəˈɡəʊ/

Verb

overgo ‎(third-person singular simple present overgoes, present participle overgoing, simple past overwent, past participle overgone)

1. (now rare) To cross, go over (a barrier etc.); to surmount. [from 8th c.]
2. (obsolete) To pass (a figurative barrier); to transgress. [8th-19th c.]
   • 1882, John Payne, trans., The Thousand Nights and One Night, vol 3:

     How many an one in its vanities hath gloried and taken pride, / Till froward and arrogant thus he grew and did all bounds o'ergo!

3. (intransitive, now Britain dialectal) To pass by, pass away; often, to go unnoticed. [from 9th c.]
   • 1818, John Keats, Endymion, II:

     He did not rave, he did not stare aghast, / For all those visions were o'ergone, and past [...].

4. To spread across (something); to overrun. [from 10th c.]
5. To go over, move over the top of, travel across the surface of; to traverse, travel through. [from 13th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.iii:

     forward rode, and kept her readie way / Along the strond, which as she ouer-went, / She saw bestrowed all with rich aray / Of pearles and pretious stones of great assay [...].

   • 1625, Francis Bacon, The Praise of Knowledge:

     The fixed stars overgo Saturn, and so in them and all the rest, all is but one motion, and the nearer the earth the slower – a motion also whereof air and water do participate, though much interrupted.

6. To go beyond; to exceed, surpass. [from 13th c.]
   • 1597, William Shakespeare, Richard III, II.2:

     O, what cause have I, / Thine being but a moiety of my grief, / To overgo thy plaints and drown thy cries!

   • 1992, Domna C Stanton, Discourses of Sexuality, p. 177:

     He seeks to persuade the queen not merely to emulate the Amazons' vigilant territoriality but to overgo them by emulating the Spaniards' rampant invasiveness.

7. To get the better of; to overcome, overpower. [from 13th c.]
   • 1594, Christopher Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Act I:

     Both barking Scylla, and the sounding rocks, / The Cyclops' shelves, and grim Ceraunia's seat, / Have you o'ergone, and yet remain alive.

8. (obsolete) To overtake, go faster than. [15th-17th c.]
   • 1598, George Chapman, trans. Homer, Iliad, book VI:

     If it chance, that we be overgone / By his more swiftness, urge him still to run upon our fleet, / And (lest he 'scape us to the town) still let thy javelin meet / With all his offers of retreat.

Etymology 2

Blend of overlapping +‎ oligonucleotide.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊvəɡəʊ/

Noun

overgo ‎(plural overgoes)

1. (genetics) A sequence of overlapping oligonucleotides, used to design hybridization.
   • 1999, Birren & Green, Genome Analysis, p. 207:

     Mixtures of such specific "overgo" probes can be used to screen arrayed library filters by DNA-DNA hybridization [...].

   • 2004, Detrich, Westerfield & Zon, The Zebrafish: Genetics, Genomics and Informatics, p. 318:

     Hybridization of multiple overgoes produces many clones, perhaps 40 clones at a time.

Anagrams

• go over, groove