overstep
A gait in which the hind foot touches ground in front of where the front foot touches the ground.
Noun
- A gait in which the hind foot touches ground in front of where the front foot touches the ground.
- A few animals, such as bison, commonly use an understep walk, while several species, including black bears, cougars and pronghorn regularly use an overstep walk. - 2012, Jonathan Poppele, Animal Tracks: Midwest Edition,...
- Therefore, an understep (where the hind track lies behind the front track) is probably a slower gait than a direct-registering walk where the hind lies on top of the front, and both are probably slower than an overstep...
- A movement in which one oversteps.
- A decision or action that goes too far.
- […] an overstep of their legal bounds as an organization of any kind, and a violation of your civil rights. - 2017, Katessa Harkey, The Peace of the Hall, page 45:
Origin
From Middle English *oversteppen, from Old English ofersteppan, from Proto-Germanic *uberstapjaną (“to step over; overstep”). Cognate with Dutch overstappen, German Low German överstappen, German überstapfen, überstepfen. Cf. transgress. By surface analysis, over- + step.
Verb
- To go too far beyond (a limit); especially, to cross boundaries or exceed norms or conventions.
- That color scheme really oversteps the bounds of good taste.
- As a result, there was a gain of 3½ min. from Goraghwood to Dundalk, which we reached 2 min. early. Nevertheless, the customs officials succeeded in overstepping their 13-min. time allowance, and we left 1 min. late. -...
Synonyms: transgress outstep
- To take a step in which the foot touches ground too far forward.
- As an instance of this inability to control the muscles well, may be cited the almost constant tendency to understep or overstep especially with the fore legs. - 1907, University of Nebraska (Lincoln campus)....
- If a sense of feeling gave him some knowledge of the width of the steps the fact that the third step was ⅝ of an inch wider could not cause him to overstep, but if it had any effect it would tend to cause him to...
- Cerebellar dysfunction is characterized by truncal ataxia, a broad-based stance, dysmetria in which the limbs either overstep (hypermetria) or understep (hypometria), and tremor that is most pronounced when the animal...
- To move with a gait such that the hind foot touches the ground forward of the point where the front foot touches the ground.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:overstep.