I would not “talk about pulling curtains over a window”, that sounds odd as well, thought not as much. Curtains generally go “across” a window, from side to side, or “down” if they’re blinds.
But I would think that pulling the curtains “over” a window would by default mean to have completely cover the window. Just as to “cover one’s eyes” would mean to result in not being able to see anything, not “it’s halfway down and I can see around it”.
Most of the “over” expressions listed on the Wiki page you gave (I didn’t know that would be in Wikipedia) you consider as “relative position” are in fact “over” in the sense of “on top of” for the relative positioning, as far as I can tell, except in cases like “to come/go over”, which is indicating a direction of travel towards someone, as to close a gap.
But it’s true, “X over” can take on many different colloquial meanings. I was thinking the other day of the term “warmed over”. It’s usually a phrase used figuratively, to indicate an act (like in a show) or an idea is derivative, rehashed, or something to that effect.
What exactly does that mean? Is the use of “over” there meant to evoke food that wasn’t recently reheated, but continuously kept warm since its original cooking (but at a lower, non-cooking temperature), as opposed to simply “reheated”?
Sure, over in this context indicates relative position, on top of or in front of or across, and with the implication that the thing behind is thus covered or obscured.
That seems consistent with the definition given by UDS above:
In other words, it’s closed in a manner that is over the hole, across it and sufficient to cover it and block sight of the room; but not latched or locked.
It means the same as “warmed”, that is, reheated, not continuously warm. It’s not totally an unnecessary modifier. In some cases, the term could mean that the food, having been reheated, is not as good as it had been originally, that it has lost some flavor, or texture, in the reheating.
To “cover over a window with curtains” means the curtains totally block the light. To “put curtains over a window” means curtains totally cover a window. But to put, say, a picture over the window means the picture is above the window. To cover over a window with a picture means you have a really big picture, bigger than the window.
“Over” in “warmed over” I have always understood in the sense of “again” - “warmed over” means “reheated”. It has the same sense in “do over”, and other idioms.
Rightly or wrongly, I think of this sense of “over” as an AmE characteristic, and I don’t think it will have any connection to the Irish “closed over” idiom related to doors.
I suspect - a wild guess - it may be an anglicisation of an Irish (as in, Irish language) usage. Notoriously, there tends not to be one-to-one correspondence between prepositions in different languages. There’s an Irish prpoosiation thar. meanings something like over, across, against. If a door is almost but not quite shut, it’s closed to me, or closed against me, in the sense that I can’t pass through the doorway without first opening the door.
I understand it to mean that the door is closed to the extent that you can’t see through the gap, but not fully closed. I would never have thought it was an unusual expression or difficult to understand. “Over” in this context means “across” as in “over the road”.
I would take it as either sealed up, like inside a wall, or a path in life that is no longer a option, depending on context, but both would be a odd usage of the words.
It’s ok using literary license. Imagine it- you walk into a room expecting the door to be closed but it’s not. You might describe it in a novel as:
“The door was ajar but already opened!” Seeing the door ajar made you realize it was already opened.
Never heard the phrase and would be expected it to mean sealed off. I can reconcile it with the word “doorway”, as in “closed over the doorway”, but not completely closed.
But Americans don’t use the phrase over the road that way, either. If you didn’t explain it as across, I would have no idea what you were getting at because my only context for “over the road” is long-distance trucking.
A: My best guess would be that the door was permanently taken out of commission - e.g. bricked or boarded over, so that it could not be used.
b: Pennsylvania
My first thought was that I’ve never heard that phrase before, and that if I had to guess at a meaning it would be that the door have been rendered unusable by being blocked, boarded over, etc.
After reading the other responses, it occurs to me that I may have heard it specifically n the context of remodeling a building, and in that context it refers to a door that has been ‘removed’, such that the place where the door used to be is not just a solid wall.
