OVERFALL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Overfall

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noun

Overfall n.

A cataract; a waterfall. (Obs.)

(Naut.) A turbulent surface of water, caused by strong currents setting over submerged ridges; also, a dangerous submerged ridge or shoal.

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Etymology of 'Overfall'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Overfall" Quotes from Famous Books

... canoe and luggage down a steep and slippery overfall, launched her again, and shot down past Harvington Weir, where a crowd of small sandpipers kept them company for a mile, flitting ahead and alighting but to take wing again. Tilda had fallen silent. By and by, as ...

— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... black about their eyes, with red sharp bills, long wings, their tails long and forked like swallows; and they flew flapping their wings like lapwings. In the afternoon we met with a rippling tide or current, or the water of some shoal or overfall; but were past it before we could sound. The birds last mentioned and this were further signs of land. In the evening we had fair weather and a small gale at west. At 8 o'clock we sounded again; but ...

— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... water, and they sailed away, leaving Teneriffe to the north. On September 18 they put into the excellent port of the island of Gomera, 'the best,' he says, 'in all the Canaries, the town and castle standing on the very breach of the sea, but the billows do so tumble and overfall that it is impossible to land upon any part of the strand but by swimming, saving in a cove under steep rocks, where they can pass towards the town but one after the other.' Here, as at Lanzarote, they were taken for Algerines, and the guns ...

— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse