bestride

harpata puhekieltä To be astride something, to stand over or sit on with legs on either side, especially to sit on a horse.
1816, (w), "Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia, February 1816" lines 27-31, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47651/47651-h/47651-h.htm

But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind, / Which from Siberian caves the monarch freed, / And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind, / And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride, / And to the battle ride.

He threw in my way a piece of timber which I bestrided, and the waves tossed me to and fro till they cast me upon an island coast (..)

(..) she would take the betrothal document from her father's chest of drawers and pore over the signature: Ezriel Babad. (..) His signature seemed to bestride her own.

He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road.

He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!

You see, Jim Crow does it differently in Africa. His is a slow but tight and deadly squeeze. (..) He bestrides this continent from Algiers to Cape Town, and the guns around his belt face east, west, south and north.

Over the past two hundred years the English language has risen, seemingly irresistably, to its present position of world-bestriding supremacy.