How to Use overtop in a Sentence

overtop

verb
  • Lake water would overtop its gates and race into the city, and beyond.
    — New York Times, 17 May 2020
  • This space once was an odd little closet off the living room overtop the stairwell.
    — Taylor Mead, House Beautiful, 3 Aug. 2018
  • Once the embankments have been overtopped, the seawater can’t flow out again.
    — Mahadi Al Hasnat, Vox, 30 May 2024
  • There’s something about Dounia’s cool couplets overtop a slow step-soul beat that feel crisp and salty.
    — Claire Dodson, Teen Vogue, 20 June 2019
  • Murphy said that if conditions remain dry, the sill will most likely be overtopped again.
    — Denise Chow, NBC News, 26 Sep. 2023
  • Wade tells me that if the gutters are overtopped with water, this can damage your home's foundation.
    — Terri Williams, Forbes, 30 Oct. 2024
  • In extreme cases, water can overtop dams, causing a risk of failure.
    — Paul Rogers, The Mercury News, 13 Feb. 2025
  • No stepping off the sidewalk into a puddle of slush that overtops your work shoes, soaking your socks for the rest of the day.
    — Paul Cappiello, Louisville Courier Journal, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Sandy’s unprecedented 16-foot surge overtopped the roads and poured into homes.
    — Nathalie Baptiste, Slate Magazine, 30 Oct. 2017
  • The number could rise to as many as 2,945 dead if levees broke before being overtopped.
    — Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com, 22 May 2018
  • The fear was that the waterways would overtop the levees built to protect the community.
    — Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Jan. 2023
  • Dockside, floodwaters overtop the concrete piers, shorting power hookups to the mighty ships that are docked in the world’s largest naval base.
    — Laura Parker, National Geographic, 7 Feb. 2017
  • Officials released water from those reservoirs to ease the pressure, but at least one of the reservoirs still overtopped its banks.
    — Alaska Dispatch News, 30 Aug. 2017
  • In the nearby town of Burlington, the river did overtop a slough off the Skagit.
    — Evan Bush, NBC news, 13 Dec. 2025
  • Her eyes, not quite blue, not quite brown, have a watery quality, as if some sadness in her nature has finally overtopped its banks.
    — Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Those surge levels will not be enough to overtop hurricane levees in New Orleans.
    — Ramon Antonio Vargas | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 22 Aug. 2020
  • On rainy and high tide days, the track and baseball field nearby can get submerged in ankle deep water as the river overtops the old seawall.
    — Alex Harris, Miami Herald, 27 Jan. 2026
  • Their muffins overtopped the baking tins in a mushroom cloud shape and were not only spectacular to look at, but delicious.
    — Chronicle Staff, San Francisco Chronicle, 19 Mar. 2018
  • The most common reason levees fail is overtopping, when water from a river, stream or lake behind the levee flows over the top.
    — Farshid Vahedifard, The Conversation, 29 Dec. 2025
  • Some debris basins were in place, but they were quickly overtopped by the hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of water and sediment.
    — Lee MacDonald, Washington Post, 20 Jan. 2018
  • During Floyd, dozens of these lagoons either breached or were overtopped by floodwaters, spilling the contents.
    — Michael Biesecker, Fox News, 12 Sep. 2018
  • During Floyd, dozens of these lagoons either breached or were overtopped by floodwaters, spilling the contents.
    — Michael Biesecker, The Seattle Times, 11 Sep. 2018
  • Additional steps to prevent the water from overtopping the dam.
    — Paula Wethington, CBS News, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Barry’s waters overtopped the Montegut and Dularge levees, though none of them were breached.
    — Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 15 July 2019
  • But a levee in Terrebonne Parish was overtopped by water for part of the day, officials said.
    — Fox News, 14 July 2019
  • The lake had been drained for agriculture more than a century earlier, but the pounding rain overtopped rivers and burst through levees to fill it once again.
    — Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 25 Oct. 2023
  • Water project operators must reduce flows to avoid overtopping the concrete banks of the aqueduct in those sections that have sunk.
    — Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News, 9 Feb. 2017
  • The park closed its Westside Road, which saw minor damage after glacial floodwater overtopped it.
    — Author: Evan Bush, Anchorage Daily News, 9 Aug. 2019
  • But that will depend on how fast the waters recede and, in some places where water levels overtopped lock structures, whether any repair of the structures are needed.
    — Madeline Heim, Journal Sentinel, 2 May 2023
  • Seawalls were overtopped in sections along Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk.
    — Alex Harris, Miami Herald, 6 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'overtop.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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