Word.ws English Dictionary

overdefer

overdefer verb: to defer a larger amount than one should.

Verb

overdefer (third-person singular simple present overdefers, present participle overdeferring, simple past and past participle overdeferred)

  1. To defer a larger amount than one should.
    • Thus it is important to be realistic about the supposed revenue loss, because very quickly estate planners would become realistic and would stop overdeferring their client's taxes.1976, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means, Federal Estate and Gift Taxes
    • If the tax planner overdefers expenses into a later year, the taxpayer may be in an AMT position in that year since the regular tax will be significantly impacted by the additional deductions.1983, Journal of Taxation of Investments - Volume 1, page 302
  2. To be overly deferential.
    • The analysis overdefers to government regulation and it understates the power of existing risk controls.1987, The Scientist - Volume 1, Issues 4-27, page 24
    • There are occasions when consumers are overdeferred to for the sake of more business.1998 June, Monroe Friedman, “No one is always right, including the customer: Comments on "The Customer Is Not Always Right"”, in Journal of Business Ethics, volume 17, number 8

Examples of overdefer in a sentence

  • Employees who will overdefer because 1997 has 27 paydays will have their deductions decreased automatically by WDC.1996, Wisconsin. Department of Workforce Development, Bulletin:
  • More troublingly, the history above strongly suggests that these structural biases in fact routinely pushed courts to overdefer to police judgment.2017, Harvard Law Review: Volume 130, Number 8:

Forms of overdefer

third-person singular presentoverdefers
present participleoverdeferring
past participleoverdeferred
pastoverdeferred

Origin of overdefer

From over- + defer.

Questions about overdefer

What does overdefer mean?
Overdefer means to defer a larger amount than one should.
How do you use overdefer in a sentence?
Employees who will overdefer because 1997 has 27 paydays will have their deductions decreased automatically by WDC.
What part of speech is overdefer?
Overdefer is a verb.
What is the past tense of overdefer?
The past tense of overdefer is overdeferred.

Words near overdefer in the dictionary

  1. overdeepenings
  2. overdeepens
  3. overdeeply
  4. overdefended
  5. overdefensive
  6. overdefer
  7. overdeference
  8. overdeferred
  9. overdeferring
  10. overdefers
  11. overdefine

Source and license

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