Word.ws English Dictionary

overburn

overburn verb: to burn too much or for too long.

Verb

overburn (third-person singular simple present overburns, present participle overburning, simple past and past participle overburned or overburnt)

  1. (transitive) To burn too much or for too long.
  2. (transitive) To record more than the usual available data capacity onto (an optical disc).
  3. (figuratively, intransitive) To be overzealous.

Noun

overburn (usually uncountable, plural overburns)

  1. (rare, usually) An excessive burning.
    • The furnace with the hickory wood was at a great heat and in danger of an overburn.1884, The Clay Worker, T. A. Randall & Co., page 214
    • But this is not possible in our ordinary commercial kiln, nor would it be practicable to try it, for the reason that the reduction taking place in the top of the kiln would be so great that the alkalis and other fluxes present in the clay would enter into combination with the ferrous oxide and...1911, Brick and Clay Record, Kenfield-Leach, page 179

Forms of overburn

Verb
third-person singular presentoverburns
present participleoverburning
past participleoverburned
pastoverburned
past participleoverburnt
pastoverburnt
Noun
pluraloverburns

Origin of overburn

From over- + burn.

Questions about overburn

What does overburn mean?
Overburn means to burn too much or for too long.
What part of speech is overburn?
Overburn can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overburn?
The past tense of overburn is overburned.

Words near overburn in the dictionary

  1. overburdening
  2. overburdeningly
  3. overburdens
  4. overburdensome
  5. overbureaucratization
  6. overburn
  7. overburned
  8. overburning
  9. overburnings
  10. overburns
  11. overburnt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overburn (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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