Word.ws English Dictionary

overfocus

overfocus verb: to focus excessively (on a particular subject to the exclusion of others).

Verb

overfocus (third-person singular simple present overfocuses or overfocusses, present participle overfocusing or overfocussing, simple past and past participle overfocused or overfocussed)

  1. To focus excessively (on a particular subject to the exclusion of others)

Noun

overfocus (countable and uncountable, plural overfocuses)

  1. (rare) Excessive focus.
    • Yet it is a knowledge that remains an outsider's knowledge, and confined to the outside of things. O'Hara has never been truly of the rich as Edith Wharton was, and he has always reported the manners of the upper classes with a glaring overfocus, a visible nervous stress, as if unable to shake off...1913, Henry Mills Alden, Thomas Bucklin Wells, Lee Foster Hartman, Frederick Lewis Allen, Harper's Magazine, Harper & Brothers, page 114
    • Emphasis upon NVC decreases overfocus on words, intellectual insights, and understanding of psychodynamics which do not sufficiently stimulate and motivate patients toward being, toward self-realization, toward that dynamically knowing self which inherently implies accepting self with and without...1963, Max Rosenbaum, Milton Miles Berger, Group Psychotherapy and Group Function, Basic Books, page 425

Forms of overfocus

Verb
third-person singular presentoverfocuses
third-person singular presentoverfocusses
present participleoverfocusing
present participleoverfocussing
past participleoverfocused
pastoverfocused
past participleoverfocussed
pastoverfocussed
Noun
pluraloverfocuses

Origin of overfocus

From over- + focus.

Questions about overfocus

What does overfocus mean?
Overfocus means to focus excessively (on a particular subject to the exclusion of others).
What part of speech is overfocus?
Overfocus can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overfocus?
The past tense of overfocus is overfocused.

Words near overfocus in the dictionary

  1. overflying
  2. overfoam
  3. overfoamed
  4. overfoaming
  5. overfoams
  6. overfocus
  7. overfocused
  8. overfocuses
  9. overfocusing
  10. overfocussed
  11. overfocusses

Source and license

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