OVERLAY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Overlay

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/ˈoʊvərlˌeɪ/ Listen

noun

Overlay n.

1.

A covering.

2.

(Printing) A piece of paper pasted upon the tympan sheet to improve the impression by making it stronger at a particular place.

3.

(Computers) A subroutine which occupies a portion of main memory which is occupied at some other time by another subroutine during execution of the same program. Overlays were used as an older technique to allow larger programs to be executed in restricted main memory space; the same effect is now accomplished by different techniques.

verb

Overlay v. t. (past & past part. overlaid; pres. part. overlaying)

1.

To lay, or spread, something over or across; hence, to cover; to overwhelm; to press excessively upon. "When any country is overlaid by the multitude which live upon it." "As when a cloud his beams doth overlay." "Framed of cedar overlaid with gold." "And overlay With this portentous bridge the dark abyss."

2.

Specifically: To cover (an object made of an inexpensive metal, glass, or other material) with a thin sheet of an expensive metal, especially with silver or gold. Distinguished from to plate, which is done by a chemical or electrical deposition process.

3.

To smother with a close covering, or by lying upon. "This woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it." "A heap of ashes that o'erlays your fire."

4.

(Printing) To put an overlay on.

Overlie v. t. (past overlay; past part. overlain; pres. part. overlying) To lie over or upon; specifically, to suffocate by lying upon; as, to overlie an infant. "A woman by negligence overlieth her child in her sleeping."

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Etymology of 'Overlay'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Overlay" Quotes from Famous Books

... called also EBIONITES, in the primitive Church who sought to overlay the simple ordinances of Christianity with Judaic observances and rites, "a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were ...

— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... wife making a book on the course. I bet she'd overlay it and then turn round and back the favourite at a shorter price than she'd ...

— Esther Waters • George Moore

... are three dimensional models showing the evolution of the Genesee Valley in New York from early times to the present. Here you will see a beautiful panorama of what it looked like two hundred million years ago right where we are sitting and standing now when the seas overlay the area during the Devonian and Silurian times. We have reconstructed the little sea creatures that lived in the rocks in their ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... from the corruptions introduced into it by men. It is not alone from the world without that Christ's church has been assailed. Corrupt men have arisen within her pale who have set themselves to deny or explain away her essential doctrines, to change her holy practice, or to crush and overlay her with a load of superstitious observances. But the gospel cannot be destroyed by inward any more than by outward enemies. From time to time it asserts its divine origin and invincible power, by bursting the bands ...

— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... of mica, quartz, hornblende, feldspar, and other minerals could never have been formed except under a blanket of rock which almost prevented the original magmas from cooling. The thousands or tens of thousands of feet of rock which once overlay the schists and still more the granites and gneisses must have been slowly removed by erosion, for there was no other way to get rid of them. This process must have taken tens of millions of years, and yet the whole work must have been practically completed a hundred or perhaps several hundred ...

— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

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