Word.ws English Dictionary

oversignify

oversignify verb: to have or be ascribed too much meaning or importance.

Verb

oversignify (third-person singular simple present oversignifies, present participle oversignifying, simple past and past participle oversignified)

  1. To have or be ascribed too much meaning or importance.
    • It is one thing for woman to offer her body to man's scopophilic gaze, but quite another to oversignify male desire by covering her nature and her sexual being with a masquerade of femininity.1992, Valeria Finucci, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto

Forms of oversignify

third-person singular presentoversignifies
present participleoversignifying
past participleoversignified
pastoversignified

Origin of oversignify

From over- + signify.

Questions about oversignify

What does oversignify mean?
Oversignify means to have or be ascribed too much meaning or importance.
What part of speech is oversignify?
Oversignify is a verb.
What is the past tense of oversignify?
The past tense of oversignify is oversignified.

Words near oversignify in the dictionary

  1. oversigned
  2. oversignification
  3. oversignifications
  4. oversignified
  5. oversignifies
  6. oversignify
  7. oversignifying
  8. oversilent
  9. oversilver
  10. oversilvered
  11. oversilvering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oversignify (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: “oversignify.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oversignify. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.