Outreached

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Stretched or extended outward or forward from a point of origin
2. Put forth or projected away from the body or base
3. Extended in a direction away from the starting position

Etymology: "Outreached" is the past tense and past participle of "outreach," so it inherits the history of its base verb. "Reach" comes from Old English "rǣcan," meaning to stretch out or extend a part of the body, and it has been in use since before the Norman Conquest, with cognates across Germanic languages such as German "reichen." The prefix "out-" is the older and more interesting piece. In Old English, "ūt" meant "outside" or "away from within," and it was attached to many verbs to signal going beyond a limit. "Outreach" first appeared in the sense of reaching beyond something, often a distance or a boundary, and the past form "outreached" follows naturally: something that has been stretched past its normal limit, or extended away from the point where it began.

Synonyms: extended, stretched, reached out, expanded, prolonged

Antonyms: withdrew, contracted, retracted, receded, pulled back