Over

We can use over as an adverb to talk about movement above something or someone:

We were sitting in the garden and a huge flock of geese flew over. It was beautiful.

Over as an adverb can mean ‘to someone’s house’:

Would you like to come over and have dinner one evening? (to the speaker’s house)

We can use be over to mean ‘finished’, ‘at an end’:

We were so late that, when we got to the cinema, the film was over.

We can use over as a prefix to mean ‘too much’. We connect over to the word which comes after it, sometimes with a hyphen after over:

That new restaurant is overpriced if you ask me. (the meals are too expensive)

I didn’t enjoy the play. It was a student production, and everyone seemed to be overacting.

These are the main meanings of over but you will find other meanings and phrasal verbs with over in a good learner’s dictionary.

• Over, when used with periods of time, refers to the period from start to finish, not to any one moment during that time:

I arrived during the afternoon.

Not: I arrived over the afternoon.

• Over as a prefix meaning ‘too much’ is connected to the word that comes after it, sometimes with a hyphen; we don’t write two separate words:

The nightclub was overcrowded.

Not: The nightclub was over crowded.