Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (ambitransitive) 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
  2. (transitive) To build over or on top of another structure.
    • The architect wanted to overbuild the restaurant on top of an office.
  3. (transitive) To build with excessive size or elaboration.
  4. (intransitive) To construct more buildings than necessary in an area.

Antonyms of overbuild

Forms of overbuild

third-person singular presentoverbuilds
present participleoverbuilding
past participleoverbuilt
pastoverbuilt

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

  1. overbubbling
  2. overbudget
  3. overbudgeted
  4. overbudgeting
  5. overbudgets
  6. overbuild
  7. overbuilder
  8. overbuilders
  9. overbuilding
  10. overbuilds
  11. overbuilt

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.

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