Word.ws English Dictionary

overstretch

overstretch verb: to stretch too far.

Verb

overstretch (third-person singular simple present overstretches, present participle overstretching, simple past and past participle overstretched)

  1. To stretch too far.
    • The idle triumphes, maskes, lasciuious showes
      And prodigall gifts bestowed on Gaueston,
      Haue drawne thy treasure drie, and made thee weake,
      The murmuring commons ouerstretched hath.1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC...
    • If some of [the Bishops] have overstretched their power, and incroached too much upon the Temporalty, if it be so, I shall not be unwilling these things should be redressed and reformed […]1640, Charles I of England, Speech given to the Lords and Commons, at the Benquetting-House in White-Hall, 25 January, 1640, in The Works of King Charles the Martyr, London: Ric[hard] Chiswell, p. 169
  2. To stretch over something.

Noun

overstretch (plural overstretches)

  1. The act of stretching something too far or beyond available resources.

Forms of overstretch

Verb
third-person singular presentoverstretches
present participleoverstretching
past participleoverstretched
pastoverstretched
Noun
pluraloverstretches

Origin of overstretch

From Middle English overstrecchen, corresponding to over- + stretch. Compare Dutch overstrekken (“to overstretch”), German überstrecken (“to overstretch”).

Words formed from overstretch

Words that rhyme with overstretch

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about overstretch

What does overstretch mean?
Overstretch means to stretch too far.
What part of speech is overstretch?
Overstretch can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overstretch?
The past tense of overstretch is overstretched.

Words near overstretch in the dictionary

  1. overstress
  2. overstressed
  3. overstresses
  4. overstressful
  5. overstressing
  6. overstretch
  7. overstretched
  8. overstretches
  9. overstretching
  10. overstrew
  11. overstrewed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overstretch (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overstretch.wav.

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