oversignal
oversignal verb: to signal excessively.
Verb
oversignal (third-person singular simple present oversignals, present participle (US) oversignaling or (UK) oversignalling, simple past and past participle (US) oversignaled or (UK) oversignalled)
- To signal excessively.
- Thus an employer who truly plans to stay around may have to "oversignal" with incentive systems that are too expensive for those who plan to cut and run […]1997, American Economic Association, Papers and Proceedings of the Annual Meeting
- By invoking the metaphor of a semaphore, Burke marks the ability of an operatic performance to signal strongly — even to oversignal — and to do so in a stiff, exaggerated way, as with flags on sticks.2009, Debra Hawhee, Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language, page 25
Forms of oversignal
| third-person singular present | oversignals |
|---|---|
| present participle US | oversignaling |
| present participle UK | oversignalling |
| past participle US | oversignaled |
| past US | oversignaled |
| past participle UK | oversignalled |
| past UK | oversignalled |
Origin of oversignal
From over- + signal.
Questions about oversignal
- What does oversignal mean?
- Oversignal means to signal excessively.
- What part of speech is oversignal?
- Oversignal is a verb.
- What is the past tense of oversignal?
- The past tense of oversignal is oversignaled.
Words near oversignal in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: oversignal (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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Cite this entry: “oversignal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oversignal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.