overbuild
overbuild verb: to perform excessive construction on a building or in an area.
Verb
overbuild (third-person singular simple present overbuilds, present participle overbuilding, simple past and past participle overbuilt)
- To perform excessive construction on a building or in an area.
- How much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman's subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding of rural Middlesex.c. 1962, Philip Larkin on John Betjeman
- To build over or on top of another structure.
- The architect wanted to overbuild the restaurant on top of an office.
- To build with excessive size or elaboration.
- To construct more buildings than necessary in an area.
Antonyms of overbuild
Forms of overbuild
| third-person singular present | overbuilds |
|---|---|
| present participle | overbuilding |
| past participle | overbuilt |
| past | overbuilt |
Origin of overbuild
From over- + build.
Words formed from overbuild
Questions about overbuild
- What does overbuild mean?
- Overbuild means to perform excessive construction on a building or in an area.
- What part of speech is overbuild?
- Overbuild is a verb.
- What is the past tense of overbuild?
- The past tense of overbuild is overbuilt.
Words near overbuild in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overbuild (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “overbuild.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overbuild. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
