Word.ws English Dictionary

overextend

overextend verb: to expand or extend to an excessive degree, especially to do so beyond a safe limit; to overreach.

Verb

overextend (third-person singular simple present overextends, present participle overextending, simple past and past participle overextended)

  1. To expand or extend to an excessive degree, especially to do so beyond a safe limit; to overreach.
  2. (transitive) To apply (a term) to too many referents, by overextension.
  3. (transitive) To push a pawn too far, so that it becomes vulnerable to the opponent's attacks.

Forms of overextend

third-person singular presentoverextends
present participleoverextending
past participleoverextended
pastoverextended

Origin of overextend

From over- + extend.

Words formed from overextend

Questions about overextend

What does overextend mean?
Overextend means to expand or extend to an excessive degree, especially to do so beyond a safe limit; to overreach.
What part of speech is overextend?
Overextend is a verb.
What is the past tense of overextend?
The past tense of overextend is overextended.

Words near overextend in the dictionary

  1. overexpressions
  2. overexpressor
  3. overexpressors
  4. overexquisite
  5. overexquisitely
  6. overextend
  7. overextended
  8. overextender
  9. overextenders
  10. overextending
  11. overextends

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overextend (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overextend.wav.

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