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Overlay   Listen
noun
Overlay  n.  
1.
A covering.
2.
(Printing) A piece of paper pasted upon the tympan sheet to improve the impression by making it stronger at a particular place.
3.
(Computers) A subroutine which occupies a portion of main memory which is occupied at some other time by another subroutine during execution of the same program. Overlays were used as an older technique to allow larger programs to be executed in restricted main memory space; the same effect is now accomplished by different techniques.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Overlay" Quotes from Famous Books



... spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with the slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which, fold after fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above the green crests billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more could happen to them if they went home two hours later than ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... smile was frozen, so to speak, as by some sudden congealment on to her face, and did not thaw off it till she had reached the sharp turn at the end of the street, where she leaned heavily on the railing and breathed through her nose. A light autumnal mist overlay the miles of marsh, but the sun was already drinking it up, promising the Tillingites another golden day. The tidal river was at the flood, and the bright water lapped the bases of the turf-covered banks that kept it within its course. Beyond that was the tram-station towards which ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... Bourboulon, Siberia is more civilized than old Russia; so true is it that it is easier to overlay a new country with civilization than to ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... born out of my mother, generations guided me; My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it, For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long low strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care; All forces have been steadily ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... before her fall. Let him, looking from Lido or Fusina, replace in the forest of towers those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the French threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold,[12] cleanse from their pollution those choked canals which are now the drains of hovels, where they were once vestibules of palaces, and fill them with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... within the edge of the swamp, which, at this season, was quite dry in many places, on a spot where the fallen dead bodies of trees overlay one another and a dense growth of willows and vines and dwarf palmetto shut out the light of the open fields, the younger and some of the harsher senior members of the Grandissime family were sitting or ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... was deeply tanned. The color of hers was completely masked by a bizarrely spectacular overlay of designs done in ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... their present position? In one sense they never came at all; for they existed on the surface of the chalk from the time it rose from the bottom of the sea to its present position. They are, in fact, the remains of a great sheet of fine sand and gravel cemented together by silex, which formerly overlay the chalk downs, the other parts of which have been dissolved and worn by wind and rain until only the harder cores or kernels survive to tell the tale. And the proof of this is not far to seek. The chalk of the London Basin is still capped by layers of such sandstone, as ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... To overlay malpractice by imputing to its victims perverse or criminal conduct is the stale but never-failing device ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... helped to enforce the lesson of the miracle plays that a dramatist's proper business was elaboration rather than invention. None of the Elizabethan dramatists except Ben Jonson habitually constructed their own plots. Their method was to take something ready at their hands and overlay it with realism or poetry or romance. The stories of their plays, like that of Hamlet's Mousetrap, were "extant and writ in choice Italian," and very often their methods of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... rattling and howling through the forest—moaning with a hungry sound as it strips the leaves from the bare boughs, and whirls them into the air. High over the tree-tops, in a widespread, trailing, noisy crew, there fly, with resounding cries, flocks of birds which seem to darken and overlay the very heavens. Then a strange feeling comes over one, until one seems to hear the voice of some one whispering: "Run, run, little child! Do not be out late, for this place will soon have become dreadful! Run, little child! Run!" And at the words terror will possess one's soul, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... its dooryard, and the larger structures of several stores. Over all loomed the dark mountain. The sun had just dropped below the ridge down which the road had led them, but still shone clear and golden as an overlay of colour laid against the sombre ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... kind: and Billy not being well when he came in, my grief passed off without blame. He had said many tender things to me; but added, that if I gave myself so much uneasiness every time the child ailed any thing, he would hire the nurse to overlay him. Bless me. Madam! what hard-hearted shocking things are these men capable of saying!—The farthest from their hearts, indeed; so they had need—For he was as glad of the child's being better as I ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... which seems to have most in its favour is that both are versions of a lost Greek original. Lucian applied his limpid style and his uncommon power of narration to rewrite what was no doubt a ruder and more confused story. Apuleius evidently took the story as a mere groundwork which he might overlay with his own fantastic embroidery. He was probably attracted to it by the supernatural element, which would appeal strongly to him, not merely as a professed mystic and a dabbler in magic, but as a decadent whose art sought out strange experiences ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... English language was the noblest in the world and men speaking it had invented railway trains, steamships, telegraphs, and everything worth inventing. Esther absorbed these ideas from the school reading books. The experience of a month will overlay the hereditary bequest of a century. And yet, beneath all, the prepared plate remains most sensitive to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Syria. A small poppy and a bright thistle set their flares of crimson and gold in the green; sowthistle and myosote freaked it with blue; a tall gladiolus, also to be found later by the Aujeh and on Carmel, made pink clusters. Thus did flowers overlay the fretting spikes of our road, and adorn and hide 'the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... mind disillusionment reigned supreme. Naturally, it was not the fault of the child that she had taken on so quickly the colour of her environment; nor, fortunately, was it too late to overlay those traits with other and more pleasing characteristics. But thinking of the soft-eyed, gentle, loving Italian girl he had married, Roger resolved that her child should have another chance before it was too late; and with that object ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... nor, on each horn, Cuirassiers all in steel for standing fight, Chariots, or elephants indorsed with towers Of archers; nor of labouring pioners 330 A multitude, with spades and axes armed, To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill, Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke: Mules after these, camels and dromedaries, And waggons fraught with utensils of war. Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, When Agrican, with all his northern powers, Besieged Albracea, as romances tell, The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... eluded, kept his eager, unquiet mind continually on the strain of speculation and anticipation. "I hope they will come out and let us settle the matter. You know I hate being kept in suspense." The nervous excitability—irritability—that often overlay the usually cordial kindliness and gracious bearing of the man, was an easy prey to such harassment. It breaks out at times in his letters, but was only occasionally visible to those around him. By the first of December he already foresees that he cannot last long. "Next Christmas, please God, I ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... can an intense fixity of perception upon every fact or word or date that he wishes to make permanently his own. It is easy. It is a matter of habit. If you will you can photograph an idea upon your cerebral gelatine so that neither years nor events will blot it out or overlay it. You must be clearly and distinctly aware of the thing you are putting into your mental treasure-house, and drastically certain of the cord by which you have tied it to some other thing of which you are sure. Unless it ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... in New York from early times to the present. Here you will see a beautiful panorama of what it looked like two hundred million years ago right where we are sitting and standing now when the seas overlay the area during the Devonian and Silurian times. We have reconstructed the little sea creatures that lived in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... as I never saw before, and pray Heaven I may never see again. A huge sweeping beard descended to the waist, and its whiteness was obscured by filth incredible. The long locks that mingled with it and overlay it on either side were roped together and tangled beyond hope of severance. The face was horribly pinched and meagre, and was of the color or want of color which you see in plants which have grown wholly in the dark. I will ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... attack on Whitehaven, while off Carrickfergus, he had conceived the bold project of running into Belfast Loch, where the British man-of-war Drake, of twenty guns, was at anchor; where he hoped to overlay the Drake's cable, fall foul of her bow, and thus, with her decks exposed to the Ranger's musketry, to board. He did, indeed, enter the harbor at night, but failed after repeated efforts, on account of the strong wind, to get in a proper position ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out Leavitt at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to Lakalatcha's gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping the rail, scanned the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which lay the answer ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... overflowing glass cabinets. Rich and velvety carpets over which had passed many generations, covered all the compartments. Showy curtains, not finding a vacant frame in the salons, adorned the doors leading into the kitchen. The wall mouldings gradually disappeared under an overlay of pictures, placed close together like the scales of a cuirass. Who now could accuse Desnoyers of avarice? . . . He was investing far more than a fashionable contractor ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the Bishop of Caesarea, who tells us that the morning after the Christ appeared to Constantine, the Emperor told this second marvel to his friends, and, sending for the workers in gold and precious stones who are assumed to have accompanied the Gaulish army, directed them to overlay with gold ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... character remained the same. The case was that, for all her headlong passion for deliverance, she could not help discovering now and then, through an occasional self assertion of that real good sense which her rampant and unsubjected benevolence could but overlay, not finally smother, that she was either doing nothing at all, or more evil ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... bodies, bows, arrows, and canoes. The canoes are built in shape like wherries on the river Thames, but that they are much longer, made with the rinds of birch trees, which they sew very artificially and close together, and overlay every seam with turpentine. In like manner they sew the rinds of birch trees round and deep in proportion like a brass kettle, to boil their meat in; which hath been proved to me by three mariners of a ship riding at anchor ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad

... manufacturing an old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die with a precision lathe. More mundanely, the dominant technology for mass duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days involved "cutting a stencil", punching away portions of the wax overlay on a silk screen. More directly, paper tape with holes punched in it was ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... effectively preserved except in these vessels; which are so highly esteemed all over Japan that they form the most costly articles of their show-rooms and cabinets. Indeed, so highly do they value them that they overlay them externally with fine gold embossed with great skill, and enclose them in cases of brocade; and some of these vessels are valued at and fetch from two thousand tael to eleven reals. The natives of these islands purchase them from the Japanese at very ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... When this World shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled, Baked, fried, or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled First out of, and then back again to chaos— The superstratum which will overlay us.[jd] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... she, Caterina, was to lead them all in the honor she was bringing upon her country! If her own estimate of the part she was to play was a foolish one, only a Venetian patrician maid could comprehend the glamour that overlay this vision of Caterina's—the royal delivery from bondage—the unknown delights ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... overcoat, his hands in thick gloves, walked from his door into the street. The cold straightened him. The deserted night mirrored itself in a thin coating of snow that overlay the roof-tops. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... sights as these, as I have more than once repeated, requires to be diligently sought for, and extricated from many things which overlay or mar it, throughout nearly the whole of Florentine Renaissance painting. But by good luck there is one painter in whom we can enjoy it as subtle, but also as simple, as in the hills and mountains ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... "Leave me to overlay their cur'osity," answered the ex-mate, or new commodore—"I got my hand in, by boarding six weeks with a Connecticut old maid, once, and I'll defy the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... quartz.' Then we struck across three several ridges, whose slopes were notably easier on the eastern, and more abrupt on the western side. The people had sunk several pits in places likely to yield 'kindly quartz,' and they had made no mistakes as to the overlay of the lode, its ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... adjustment of bed and cylinder, form rollers, ink fountain, grippers and delivery systems. Underlaying and overlaying; modern overlay methods. Illustrated; ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton

... medieval rapiers were ranged alongside some of the latest examples of the gunsmith's art. There were elephants' tusks and Mexican skulls; a stone jar of water from the well of Zem-Zem, and an ivory crucifix which had belonged to Torquemada. A mat of human hair from Borneo overlay a historical and unique rug woven in Ispahan and entirely composed of fragments of Holy Carpets from the Kaaba ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... quite equal in number to the foreigners: and there were enough of both, God knows: for London must have poured many here. There were houses, in every room of which, and on the stairs, the dead actually overlay each other, and in the streets before them were points where only on flesh, or under carriages, was it possible to walk. I went into the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, the prisoners had been released two weeks before-hand, and there ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... Cover the bottom of a stewpan with lean veal an inch thick, overlay it with slices of undressed gammon, two or three onions, two or three bay leaves, some sweet herbs, two blades of mace, and three cloves. Cover the stewpan, and set it over a slow fire; but when the juices come out, let the fire ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... together, nor drag the unwilling mind along with it (the willing mind hurries on before it, and grows impatient and absent)—he moves in an unmanageable procession of facts and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once—and his premises (so anxious is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay and block up his conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not till the first fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from the too great width of the calibre from which it is sent, and from striking against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost spent before it reaches ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... religion, a flaw found in the creeds of ghost-worshipping barbarians, but not of non-ghost-worshipping savages. A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude early form of theism. Granting the facts, we fail to see how they are explained by the current theory which makes the highest god the latest in evolution from a ghost. That theory wrecks itself again on the circumstance ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... who thought little, by those who were under the restraint of a sensitive talking world, to which books had contributed something, and a various eager life the rest. Milton is generally unclassical in spirit where he is learned, and naturally, because the purest poets do not overlay their conceptions with book knowledge, and the classical poets, having in comparison no books, were under little temptation to impair the purity of their style by the accumulation of their research. Over and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... If you could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... perceive, although my future wife were as unsatiable and gluttonous in her voluptuousness and the delights of venery as ever was the Empress Messalina, or yet the Marchioness (of Oincester) in England, and I desire thee to give credit to it, that I lack not for what is requisite to overlay the stomach of her lust, but have wherewith aboundingly to please her. I am not ignorant that Solomon said, who indeed of that matter speaketh clerklike and learnedly,—as also how Aristotle after him declared for a truth that, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... seen the like lie murder'd on the shore; By the wild fury of some tempest cast, The fate of ships, and shipwreck'd men, to taste. As careless dames, whom wine and sleep betray To frantic dreams, their infants overlay: So there, sometimes, the raging ocean fails, And her own brood exposes; when the whales Against sharp rocks, like reeling vessels quash'd, Though huge as mountains, are in pieces dash'd; Along the shore their dreadful limbs lie scatter'd, 100 Like hills with earthquakes shaken, torn, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... disability—it is not natural to him. His admirable little work On Usury, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr. Bentham has shut himself up since then "in nook monastic," conversing only with followers of his own, or with "men of Ind," and has endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... poured down the walls, stopped, and shied off as I looked at them, and began to go it again when I lowered my eyes. Occasionally the figures 20 would take shape somewhere about the floor, and then the figures 980 would slide up and overlay them. Then, like the lean kine of Pharaoh's dream, they would all march away and devour the fat naughts of the number 1,000. And dancing like gnats in the air were myriads of little caduceus-like, phantoms, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce



Words linked to "Overlay" :   bed, kill, ornamentation, protective covering, sheathing, overlie, overlayer, protection, ornament, cover, layer, decoration, protective cover, splash



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