To bestride is to stand or sit with a leg on each side of something. Bestride a horse, bestride the world, bestride the narrow world like a colossus.
It is archaic and grand, kept alive almost entirely by Shakespeare's line about Caesar, and it now means to dominate as much as to straddle. Anybody writing that a company or a leader bestrides an industry is borrowing that line.
1verbbestrideTo stand or sit with a leg on each side of something.
“Children love to bestride the stone lions outside the museum and pretend to ride them.”
bestride is a straddling.
Old English bestridan, from be- plus stride, meaning to stand astride of something.
Proto-West Germanic
*bistrīdan
Old English
bestrīdan
Middle English
bestriden
English, today
bestride
From Middle English bestriden, from Old English bestrīdan, from Proto-West Germanic bistrīdan; equivalent to be + stride. Compare Dutch bestrijden, German bestreiten.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA