Word.ws English Dictionary

overread

/əʊvəˈɹiːd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

past/əʊvəˈɹɛd/

overread verb: to read over, or peruse.

Verb

overread (third-person singular simple present overreads, present participle overreading, simple past and past participle overread)

  1. (obsolete) To read over, or peruse.
    • Over the dore thus written she did spye, / Bee bold: she oft and oft it over-red, / Yet could not find what sence it figured […].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. (ambitransitive) To interpret something to a greater degree, or in a more positive way, than appropriate; read in too much depth; overinterpret; overanalyze.
    • To overread Plath's houses is to transform these biographical documents into spatial ones.2005, Hilde Heynen, Gulsum Baydar, Negotiating Domesticity
    • At the same time, we overread. That is, we find in narratives qualities, motives, moods, ideas, judgments, even events for which there is no direct evidence in the discourse.2008, H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative
  3. To read too much or excessively.

Adjective

overread (comparative more overread, superlative most overread)

  1. Having read too much.

Antonyms of overread

Forms of overread

Verb
third-person singular presentoverreads
present participleoverreading
past participleoverread
pastoverread
Adjective
comparativemore overread
superlativemost overread

Origin of overread

From Middle English overreden, from Old English oferrǣdan (“to read over; read through; consider”), equivalent to over- + read.

Words formed from overread

Questions about overread

What does overread mean?
Overread means to read over, or peruse.
What part of speech is overread?
Overread can be a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce overread?
Overread is pronounced /əʊvəˈɹiːd/ (UK).
What is the past tense of overread?
The past tense of overread is overread.

Words near overread in the dictionary

  1. overreactivities
  2. overreactivity
  3. overreactor
  4. overreactors
  5. overreacts
  6. overread
  7. overreader
  8. overreaders
  9. overreadily
  10. overreadiness
  11. overreading

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overread (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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