overhail

English

Verb

overhail (third-person singular simple present overhails, present participle overhailing, simple past and past participle overhailed)

1. (obsolete) To call or tempt away from the correct path.
   • 1613, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion:

     No hunter, so, but finds the breeding of the West best; The only kind of hounds for mouth and nostril That cold doth seldom fret, nor heat doth overhail; As standing in the flight, as pleasant on the trail; Free hunting, eas'ly checkt, and loving every chase; pace: Strait running, hard and tough, of reasonable Not heavy, as that hound which Lancashire dot breed;

   • 1693, The Spiritual Warfare:

     And there is this lastly, that doth evidencee it, when one doth sin with much Deliberation and Advice, they are not overhailed by their Temptations and Lusts, and they sit down in Council to consult how such a thing may be effectuat; then had Iniqnity dominion over those that are made mention of Micah 2.1, We to them that devise iniquity upon their Beds, that sit down deliberately in the silent seasons of the night to contrive the mischievous Plots of their Hearts:

   • 1854, Henry Hutchinson, The Religious Experience and Prophecies of H. Hutchinson:

     In the strength of the Lord thy God go forward, and suffer not cowardice to overhail thee.

2. (obsolete) To rain or sprinkle on top of.
   • 1642, The Acts and Monuments of the Church Before Christ Incarnate:

     So this star of Iacob had some staines, blemishes caft upon his light and lustre, especially in the cause of Vriah and his wife, not to be covered or alleviated any way: ótherwise he was as a guide by night, so bee the starres of heaven, in overhailed darknesse, to direct Israel in Gods wayes, and to discover dangers which might accrue.

   • 1877, Francis Sadleir Stoney, A Memoir of the Life and Times of the Right Honerable Sir Ralph Sadleir, page 187:

     He looked at me, and took all patiently that I spoke ; the tears overhailed his cheeks abundantly.

   • 1899, Richard Arthur Roberts, Edward Salisbury, Montague Spencer Giuseppi, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury:

     We are sore overhailed and troubled with watch and warding, and surely it is a great charge to us in the country.

3. (rare) Synonym of overhaul
   • 1997, B. K. Tewari, Awadhesh Kumar Singh, India's Neighbours: Past and Future, page 119:

     In fact a stage has reached in Indo- nepalese relations where the pattern of Indian aid needs to be overhailed.

   • 2000, Asom Prakalpa (Group), Assam beyond 2000, page 62:

     While planned shutdown for overhailing and maintenance is a regular feature of a power supply system, continued and unplanned outages from installed units require immediate corrective steps.

   • 2017, Hugh Carrington, The Discovery of Tahiti, A Journal of the Second Voyage of H.M.S. Dolphin, →ISBN:

     We hade fine pleasant clear weather with fine regular Sea and Land breezes—the first part of this day we was Employed Compleating our Rigging and overhailing our Sea provisions, and making a thorough clean all over the ship we now got up our yards and topmasts and tard all our yards and standing rigging, at Night we had a fine pleasant land breeze which neaver feald to bring of a sweet and agreeable smell of various sorts of fruits and herbs...

4. To praise too much.
   • 1959, Jonas Mekas, Film Culture - Issues 19-23, page 22:

     And the second thing is to hail, perhaps overhail, the good things in live drama.

   • 1973, Library Journal - Volume 98, page 1065:

     The role of rhetoric in all this business of perceptions is even more a determining factor than the tardily and overhailed message of the medium so much mentioned by people who read and write with difficulty.

   • 1987, Financial Mail, page 265:

     This is a more coherent account of Vietnam than Michael Herr's brutish and overhailed Dispatches, which Pilger rightly slates as “making respectable the narcissism of a breed of war lovers."

   • 2015, Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, →ISBN:

     Freud perhaps overhailed the book by calling Dostoevsky's masterpiece the greatest Western novel, but it strongly contends with Cervantes, Tolstoy, Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Joyce, Mann, Lawrence, or anyone else.