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Glite Dictionary
🚫 To break rules 🌊 To cover land
to transgress

to transgress

9.7
Sea water moves over land when the sea level rises
  • verb
  • /trænˈɡrɛs/
  • Specialized
translation icon : avanzar sobre
  • Dr. Alan Sokal and his article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" in the 'scholarly' journal Social Text.

Examples

  • As sea levels rise, the ocean may transgress onto the low-lying coastal areas.

  • Nine standards of behavior are listed which an arahant cannot and does not transgress: taking life, stealing, sexual contact, uttering falsehoods.

    Academic text (1990)

  • When these requirements are compromised by a global economy that transgresses borders and national regulations, and that turns weaker people into potential reservoirs of spare parts for transplant surgery, the poor will resist.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Frequent wave overwash destroys dunes on rapidly transgressing barrier-island coasts.

    Academic text (1990)

  • Occasionally, thresholds are reached when undeveloped systems change from one characteristic topography to another, as in conversion from a dune barrier to an overwash flat on rapidly transgressing coasts.

    Academic text (1990)

  • The research indicates areas where the coast will transgress due to climate change.

  • During the storm, the waves began to transgress beyond the usual shoreline.

Synonyms

to transpass
vsto transgress
  • Archaic
9.9

To go past a limit or cross a border

is specific to the sea spreading over land when shorelines subside

How Extensive

to inundate
40 6.8
to submerge
42 3.9
to transgress
  • Specialized
9.7
to encroach
27 7.3
to lap
11 3.0

Surface Forms

transgress infinitive
transgressed past
transgressed past participle
transgressing present participle
transgresses third person singular

Morphology

transgress = trans + gress

The literal sense 'to go across' matches 'trans-' + 'gress', but because 'gress' does not appear as a standalone English word, the morphological relation is only partly apparent to many learners.

Etymology

The word transgress comes from the Latin parts trans- 'across' and gress 'step', the same root seen in progress. So when the sea transgresses inland it is like the water 'steps across' the shore and spreads over the land.