oversentence
oversentence verb: to issue a sentence that is harsher than necessary.
Verb
oversentence (third-person singular simple present oversentences, present participle oversentencing, simple past and past participle oversentenced)
- To issue a sentence that is harsher than necessary.
- The United States currently incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, according to the Population Reference Bureau. John C. Jeffries Jr., today’s morning lecturer, will propose ways to combat a prison system that often “oversentences and overpunishes.”2013 July 29, Maggie Livingstone, “Jeffries to address ‘oversentencing’ in U.S. justice system”, in The Chautauquan Daily, archived from the original on 06 Dec 2024
- Black people in America fit that description of being overpoliced and oversentenced.2016 July 1, Cory Doctorow, “White House plan to use data to shrink prison populations could be a racist dumpster fire”, in Boing Boing, archived from the original on 23 Mar 2025
Examples of oversentence in a sentence
- "It's about decades of an office that overcharges and oversentences but keeps getting worse results," Conklin says.2022 July 21, Daniel Walters, “Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell finds himself under attack from three fronts”, in The Inlander...
- Judges consistently oversentence people to prove they are “tough on crime,” and do so under the guise that such sentences will deter others.2023 December 8, Anthony Ehlers, “Who is a political prisoner?”, in Chicago Reader, archived from the original on 23 Aug 2025:
Forms of oversentence
| third-person singular present | oversentences |
|---|---|
| present participle | oversentencing |
| past participle | oversentenced |
| past | oversentenced |
Origin of oversentence
From over- + sentence.
Questions about oversentence
- What does oversentence mean?
- Oversentence means to issue a sentence that is harsher than necessary.
- How do you use oversentence in a sentence?
- "It's about decades of an office that overcharges and oversentences but keeps getting worse results," Conklin says.
- What part of speech is oversentence?
- Oversentence is a verb.
- What is the past tense of oversentence?
- The past tense of oversentence is oversentenced.
Words near oversentence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: oversentence (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:
Cite this entry: “oversentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oversentence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.