Word.ws English Dictionary

overclean

overclean verb: to clean to an excessive degree.

Verb

overclean (third-person singular simple present overcleans, present participle overcleaning, simple past and past participle overcleaned)

  1. (transitive) To clean to an excessive degree.
    • It’s basically resistant to dirt, so there’s no reason to overclean it.”2007 January 11, Mitchell Owens, “Room to Improve”, in New York Times

Adjective

overclean (comparative more overclean, superlative most overclean)

  1. Excessively clean.
    • The kitchen floor was not overclean.

Forms of overclean

Verb
third-person singular presentovercleans
present participleovercleaning
past participleovercleaned
pastovercleaned
Adjective
comparativemore overclean
superlativemost overclean

Origin of overclean

From over- + clean.

Questions about overclean

What does overclean mean?
Overclean means to clean to an excessive degree.
What part of speech is overclean?
Overclean can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of overclean?
The past tense of overclean is overcleaned.

Words near overclean in the dictionary

  1. overclassification
  2. overclassified
  3. overclassifies
  4. overclassify
  5. overclassifying
  6. overclean
  7. overcleaned
  8. overcleaning
  9. overcleanliness
  10. overcleanly
  11. overcleans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overclean (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: “overclean.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overclean. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.