over-egg the pudding
over-egg the pudding verb: to embellish too much; to exaggerate.
Verb
over-egg the pudding (third-person singular simple present over-eggs the pudding, present participle over-egging the pudding, simple past and past participle over-egged the pudding)
- To embellish too much; to exaggerate.
- But hard riding men, in strange countries, are apt now and then to over-egg the pudding, as the Yorkshire landlord told his Grace of Cleveland.1839 September, Nimrod [pseudonym; Charles James Apperley], “A Hunting Tour in the Midland Counties: The Quorn: The Belvoir: And the Cottesmore”, in Craven [pseudonym; John William Carleton], editor...
- The toast was drunk with tremendous applause, Mr. Jorrocks acting as fugleman—“but as we mustn't over-egg the pudding,” as the Yorkshire farmers say, we will reserve the other proceedings of the evening for another chapter.1845, Robert Smith Surtees, chapter XVI, in Hillingdon Hall, published 1888, page 161
- Synonyms:
- gild the lily
Examples of over-egg the pudding in a sentence
- They know the risks, and they will be careful not to over-egg the pudding.1960 June 22, The Earl of Arran, “The Newspapers”, in parliamentary debates (House of Lords), column 471:
- If you really want to over-egg the pudding, you can, a month or so after the funeral, organize a memorial service.2009, Virginia Ironside, The Virginia Monologues, Penguin UK, →ISBN:
- Adverbs too ('she remarked, tersely') seem to over-egg the pudding or else acquire undue weight in the mouth of a supposedly artless narrator.2010, Alan Bennett, “Introduction”, in The Complete Talking Heads, Picador, →ISBN, page 32:
Synonyms of over-egg the pudding
Forms of over-egg the pudding
| third-person singular present | over-eggs the pudding |
|---|---|
| present participle | over-egging the pudding |
| past participle | over-egged the pudding |
| past | over-egged the pudding |
| alternative form | overegg the pudding |
Origin of over-egg the pudding
Of English origin.
Words formed from over-egg the pudding
Questions about over-egg the pudding
- What does over-egg the pudding mean?
- Over-egg the pudding means to embellish too much; to exaggerate.
- How do you use over-egg the pudding in a sentence?
- They know the risks, and they will be careful not to over-egg the pudding.
- What part of speech is over-egg the pudding?
- Over-egg the pudding is a verb.
- What is the past tense of over-egg the pudding?
- The past tense of over-egg the pudding is over-egged the pudding.
Words near over-egg the pudding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: over-egg the pudding (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “over-egg the pudding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/over-egg_the_pudding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.