The word "overspread" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe a situation where something covers an area or surface to a large or increasing degree. For example: "The clouds quickly overspread the sky, casting a shadow over the entire city."
for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
O'Sullivan was protesting European meddling in American affairs, especially by France and England, which he said were acting for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
A heat wave overspread Pakistan and northern India during June.
Do what Beckett says, and you come upon passages like this: "A kind of strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last year; and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me without leaving any impression".
1964 and '66 he produced a series of 10 large, slightly bowed white canvases overspread with a fine peppering of tiny dots in 2 opposing colors.
In more than 250 canvases — not counting the many he deemed unacceptable and destroyed — he depicted the shimmering rafts of lotus blossoms that slowly overspread his pond.
"The sea was gloomy for there was a blackness over all the sky except where it was overspread with lightning which often revealed to us a distant vessel".
In 1973, Ballard published Crash, his controversial novel of sex-death eroticism in a claustrophobic mindscape of concrete and tarmac: the airport slip roads, multi-storey car parks, low-level warehouses and convenience hotels that overspread Mabey's liminal lands.
"Her flesh was soft, kind of jiggly, as if it was filled with hot water," and later, "the flesh hung in great, doughlike gobbets, a sly, senile smile had overspread her face".
In his brief allotment of years, he really did overspread the American musical waterfront, his taste catholic enough to extend even to the popular music of the poor white segregated South.
