He is generally a tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic. Every person you deal with endeavours to overreach you in the way of business; you are preyed upon by idle mendicants, who beg in the phrase of borrowing, and live upon the spoils of the stranger—
Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)
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he’ll be your death unless you overreach him; and he’ll be my ruin.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.'
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)
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Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent Heaven, might it not?