overhope
overhope noun: excessive hope or anticipation; presumption.
Noun
overhope (uncountable)
- Excessive hope or anticipation; presumption.
- If the good turn out less than you hoped for, good though it be, yet because it is not so good, it seems to you more like a loss than a gain, by reason of the overhope.1859, Francis Bacon, James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, The works of Francis Bacon: Volume 7
- Hopefulness; sanguineness.
Verb
overhope (third-person singular simple present overhopes, present participle overhoping, simple past and past participle overhoped)
- To hope excessively; presume.
- If we have overhoped ourselves in the hay we may have done the same with the hogs.1919, The Country gentleman, volume 84
- I'll cast this observation a little too broadly to make the point clearer: many principals "overhoped" that computers would have miraculous effects on all students exposed to them even if only for a few minutes per week, and now finding …1992, David G. Moursund, International Society for Technology in Education, The technology coordinator
- To hope constantly.
Forms of overhope
| third-person singular present | overhopes |
|---|---|
| present participle | overhoping |
| past participle | overhoped |
| past | overhoped |
Origin of overhope
From Middle English overhope, oferhope, equivalent to over- + hope.
Questions about overhope
- What does overhope mean?
- Overhope means excessive hope or anticipation; presumption.
- What part of speech is overhope?
- Overhope can be a noun or a verb.
Words near overhope in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overhope (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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