bestride

verb

1. (transitive)To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.

   “& thou were the truest frende to thy louar that euer bestrade hors "And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse"”

   “But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind, / Which from Siberian caves the monarch freed, / And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind, / And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride, / And to the battle ride.”

   “The knightly Crusader bestrides a war-horse of heavy proportions , which he has suddenly reined in , as he waves on high a flag as a rallying sign for his followers.”

   “He threw in my way a piece of timber which I bestrided, and the waves tossed me to and fro till they cast me upon an island coast […]”

   “Apart from the traffic that is originated within its own district, Doncaster is the hub of many important Eastern Region flows. [...] It bestrides busy routes to and from the Midlands and, of course, is a landmark on the East Coast trunk route between north and south.”

2. (transitive)To stride over, or across.
3. (figuratively, transitive)To dominate.

   “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus[…].”

   “He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!”

   “You see, Jim Crow does it differently in Africa. His is a slow but tight and deadly squeeze. […] He bestrides this continent from Algiers to Cape Town, and the guns around his belt face east, west, south and north.”

   “Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy.”