Word.ws English Dictionary

overheating

overheating is the present participle and gerund of overheat.

Noun

overheating (countable and uncountable, plural overheatings)

  1. A situation where something is overheated.
    • Even if no weakening effects were noticed after one or two overheatings, the cumulative heat effects would cause embrittlement and failure after subsequent overheatings.1964, Metal Mining & Processing, volume 1, page 32
  2. The situation where the productive capacity of an economy is unable to keep pace with growing aggregate demand, generally characterised by a below-average rate of economic growth, where growth is occurring at an unsustainable rate.

Meaning of overheat

Verb

overheat (third-person singular simple present overheats, present participle overheating, simple past and past participle overheated)

  1. (transitive) To heat excessively.
    • 'Made one quite thankful to get back to the fug, though as a rule I think the way these trains are overheated is something scandalous'.1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 8, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 131
  2. (intransitive) To become excessively hot.
  3. To grow too quickly in an uncontrolled way.
    • Dalio said that the Chinese economy was in danger of overheating, and somebody asked how a Chinese slowdown would affect the price of oil and other commodities.2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN

See all 4 meanings of overheat

Forms of overheating

pluraloverheatings

Questions about overheating

What does overheating mean?
Overheating means a situation where something is overheated.
What is overheating the present participle and gerund of?
Overheating is the present participle and gerund of overheat.
What part of speech is overheating?
Overheating is a noun.
What is the plural of overheating?
The plural of overheating is overheatings.

Words near overheating in the dictionary

  1. overheated
  2. overheatedly
  3. overheatedness
  4. overheater
  5. overheaters
  6. overheating
  7. overheatings
  8. overheats
  9. overheave
  10. overheaves
  11. overheavily

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overheating (page history and authors); overheat (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “overheating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overheating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.