Word.ws English Dictionary

overcontrol

overcontrol verb: to control to too great a degree.

Verb

overcontrol (third-person singular simple present overcontrols, present participle overcontrolling, simple past and past participle overcontrolled)

  1. (transitive) To control to too great a degree.
    • She’s not fancy or overcontrolled: she sounds relaxed but alert, and a slight nasal flatness in her voice humanizes her, makes her touch the ground.2007 January 8, The New York Times, “New CDs”, in New York Times

Noun

overcontrol (uncountable)

  1. Excessive control.
    • After a stressful event, the histrionic patient often manifests swings from rigid overcontrol to uncontrolled intrusions and emotional repetition.2011, Mardi Jon Horowitz, Stress Response Syndromes

Forms of overcontrol

third-person singular presentovercontrols
present participleovercontrolling
past participleovercontrolled
pastovercontrolled

Origin of overcontrol

From over- + control.

Questions about overcontrol

What does overcontrol mean?
Overcontrol means to control to too great a degree.
What part of speech is overcontrol?
Overcontrol can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overcontrol?
The past tense of overcontrol is overcontrolled.

Words near overcontrol in the dictionary

  1. overcontributed
  2. overcontributes
  3. overcontributing
  4. overcontribution
  5. overcontributions
  6. overcontrol
  7. overcontrolled
  8. overcontroller
  9. overcontrollers
  10. overcontrolling
  11. overcontrols

Source and license

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