Word.ws English Dictionary

overqualify

overqualify verb: to give excessive academic qualifications to.

Verb

overqualify (third-person singular simple present overqualifies, present participle overqualifying, simple past and past participle overqualified)

  1. (transitive) To give excessive academic qualifications to.
    • […] remember it is better to overqualify advisers than to make assumptions about their abilities.2001, Charles A. Jaffe, The Right Way to Hire Financial Help, 2nd edition, page 270
  2. (transitive) To modify, restrict or moderate (a statement, etc.) excessively.
    • I do have a tendency sometimes to overqualify what I am saying or labour the point.2003, Linda Papadopoulos, Malcolm Cross, Robert Bor, Reporting in Counselling and Psychotherapy, page 59

Forms of overqualify

third-person singular presentoverqualifies
present participleoverqualifying
past participleoverqualified
pastoverqualified

Origin of overqualify

From over- + qualify.

Questions about overqualify

What does overqualify mean?
Overqualify means to give excessive academic qualifications to.
What part of speech is overqualify?
Overqualify is a verb.
What is the past tense of overqualify?
The past tense of overqualify is overqualified.

Words near overqualify in the dictionary

  1. overputs
  2. overqualification
  3. overqualifications
  4. overqualified
  5. overqualifies
  6. overqualify
  7. overqualifying
  8. overquantification
  9. overquantified
  10. overquantifies
  11. overquantify

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overqualify (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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