Word.ws English Dictionary

oversanguine

UK/əʊvəˈsaŋɡwɪn/

oversanguine adjective: too sanguine; overconfident, too disposed to hopes of success.

Adjective

oversanguine (comparative more oversanguine, superlative most oversanguine)

  1. Too sanguine; overconfident, too disposed to hopes of success.
    • So when the Elizabethan bishop, Edwin Sanders, claimed that ‘the gospel hath chased away walking spirits’, he was over-sanguine.1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 571
    • In that respect the popular clamor for "smashing" the rebels was based on sound if oversanguine instinct.1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford, published 2003, page 335

Forms of oversanguine

comparativemore oversanguine
superlativemost oversanguine
alternative formover-sanguine

Origin of oversanguine

From over- + sanguine.

Words formed from oversanguine

Questions about oversanguine

What does oversanguine mean?
Oversanguine means too sanguine; overconfident, too disposed to hopes of success.
What part of speech is oversanguine?
Oversanguine is an adjective.
How do you pronounce oversanguine?
Oversanguine is pronounced /əʊvəˈsaŋɡwɪn/ (UK).

Words near oversanguine in the dictionary

  1. oversand
  2. oversanded
  3. oversanding
  4. oversands
  5. oversang
  6. oversanguine
  7. oversanguinely
  8. oversanitization
  9. oversat
  10. oversated
  11. oversatisfied

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oversanguine (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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