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Overlay vs Override - What's the difference?

overlay | override |

As verbs the difference between overlay and override

is that overlay is to lay, or spread, something over or across; to cover while override is to ride across or beyond something.

As nouns the difference between overlay and override

is that overlay is a piece of paper pasted upon the tympan sheet to improve the impression by making it stronger at a particular place while override is a mechanism, device or procedure used to counteract an automatic control.

overlay

English

Verb

  • To lay, or spread, something over or across; to cover.
  • * Spenser
  • as when a cloud his beams doth overlay
  • * Milton
  • framed of cedar overlaid with gold
  • To overwhelm; to press excessively upon.
  • * Sir Walter Raleigh
  • when any country is overlaid by the multitude which live upon it
  • * Bible, 1 Kings iii. 19
  • This woman's child died in the night, because she overlaid it.
  • * Dryden
  • a heap of ashes that o'erlays your fire
  • *1993 , (Pat Barker), The Eye in the Door'', Penguin 2014 (''The Regeneration Trilogy ), p. 371:
  • *:Prostitutes, thieves, girls who ‘overlaid ’ their babies, abortionists who stuck their knitting needles into something vital – did they really need to be here?
  • (printing) To put an on.
  • Noun

    (en noun)
  • (printing) A piece of paper pasted upon the tympan sheet to improve the impression by making it stronger at a particular place.
  • (betting) Odds which are set higher than expected or warranted. Favorable odds.
  • (horse racing) A horse going off at higher odds than it appears to warrant, based on its past performances.
  • A decal attached to a computer keyboard to relabel the keys.
  • * 1994 , Roger Frost, The IT in Secondary Science Book (page 56)
  • The keyboard overlay can be a memory jogger and a great help with spelling. In this way the keyboard makes word processing more accessible to younger as well as special needs children.

    Anagrams

    * English heteronyms

    override

    English

    Verb

  • To ride across or beyond something.
  • To ride a horse too hard.
  • To counteract the normal operation of something.
  • The Congress promptly overrode the president's veto, passing the bill into law .
  • *
  • The needs of the windmill must override everything else, he said.
  • (programming, object-oriented) To define a new behaviour of a method by creating the same method of the superclass with the same name and signature.
  • How the cat runs is defined in the method run() of the class Cat, which overrides the same method with the same signature of superclass called Mammal.

    Usage notes

    * The form overrode is sometimes used as a past participle, in place of the standard overridden.

    See also

    * (programming) overload

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A mechanism, device or procedure used to counteract an automatic control.
  • A royalty.
  • A device for prioritizing audio signals, such that certain signals receive priority over others.