Word.ws English Dictionary

overbore

overbore adjective: such that the capacity of the burning cartridge powder is greater than the volume within the barrel. Also the simple past and past participle of overbear.

Adjective

overbore (not comparable)

  1. Such that the capacity of the burning cartridge powder is greater than the volume within the barrel.

Verb

overbore (third-person singular simple present overbores, present participle overboring, simple past and past participle overbored)

  1. (transitive) To modify so that the capacity of the burning cartridge powder is greater than the volume within the barrel.
  2. To bore out more than is usual for the design; especially, to bore out to a degree that pushes the limit regarding the wall thickness of the casting.
    • The Model F engine was an overbored variation of the larger engine first applied to the Model D the previous year. This made it considerably oversquare: 5 inch bore (4.625 on the D) and 4.5 inch stroke displacing 353 cubic inches. It was rated 32.4 SAE horsepower, produced 35 at the same conditions...1985, George Philip Hanley, Stacey Pankiw Hanley, The Marmon Heritage: More Than 125 Years of American Production of World Renowned Products : Marmon, Marmon-Herrington, Marmon-Herrington...

Also used as

overbore is also the simple past and past participle of overbear.

Forms of overbore

third-person singular presentoverbores
present participleoverboring
past participleoverbored
pastoverbored

Origin of overbore

From over- + bore.

Questions about overbore

What does overbore mean?
Overbore means such that the capacity of the burning cartridge powder is greater than the volume within the barrel.
What part of speech is overbore?
Overbore can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near overbore in the dictionary

  1. overboosted
  2. overboosting
  3. overboosts
  4. overboot
  5. overboots
  6. overbore
  7. overbored
  8. overbores
  9. overboring
  10. overborn
  11. overborne

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overbore (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overbore.wav.

Cite this entry: “overbore.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overbore. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.