Word.ws English Dictionary

overlong

overlong adjective: too long; overly long.

Adjective

overlong

  1. Too long; overly long.
    • O, hold me not with silence over-long!1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • As the Island Mindanao lies very convenient for Trade, so considering its distance, the way thither may not be over long and tiresome.1697, William Dampier, chapter 13, in A New Voyage Round the World. […], London: […] James Knapton, […], →OCLC, page 351

Adverb

overlong (comparative more overlong, superlative most overlong)

  1. Too long, for an excessively long time.
    • […] she casteth the rest into the fire, and there withall sodainely flings herselfe into it: Which is no sooner done, but the people cast great store of Faggots and Billets vpon hir, lest she should languish over-long […]1613, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, Essays, London: Edward Blount and William Barret, Book 2, Chapter 29, pp. 396-397
    • […] his wandering restless glance lingered over-long even on his girl cousin, so that his pretty sharp-voiced wife recalled him with a little sneer she slipped sidewise into something else she said.1935, Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided, London: Methuen, Part 1, pp. 54-55

Examples of overlong in a sentence

  • He wondered if they would remember him—the memory of some apes is not overlong, and two years may be an eternity to them.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 196:
  • The next minute the little boy, still in his overlong trousers, was being dragged out of the house by the warden who had him by the ear.2004, Andrea Levy, chapter 26, in Small Island, London: Review, page 275:
  • He does not need to think overlong to know what the right thing is.2002, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 20, in Youth, London: Secker & Warburg, page 165:

Forms of overlong

Adjective
alternative formover-long
Adverb
comparativemore overlong
superlativemost overlong

Origin of overlong

From over- + long.

Words formed from overlong

Phrases with overlong

Questions about overlong

What does overlong mean?
Overlong means too long; overly long.
How do you use overlong in a sentence?
He wondered if they would remember him—the memory of some apes is not overlong, and two years may be an eternity to them.
What part of speech is overlong?
Overlong can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near overlong in the dictionary

  1. overlocks
  2. overlofty
  3. overlogging
  4. overlogical
  5. overlogically
  6. overlong
  7. overlong vowel
  8. overlong vowels
  9. overlook
  10. overlookable
  11. overlooked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overlong (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:

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

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