overthinking
overthinking is the present participle and gerund of overthink.
Meaning of overthink
Verb (1)
overthink (third-person singular simple present overthinks, present participle overthinking, simple past and past participle overthought)
- To think or analyze too much.
- Don't overthink the problem. It's not that difficult.
- Antonyms:
- underthink
- To think too highly (of); overestimate
- So to think of self as not to overthink — to think of yourself with sober, moral judgment.1859, Henry Ward Beecher, Sermons, page 25
- Synonyms:
- overapproximate, overstate, overestimate, overhold, overrate, overreckon
Verb (2)
overthink (third-person singular simple present overthinks, present participle overthinking, simple past and past participle overthought)
- To think about; think over
- But when I dred that wou'd not work,
I overthought me of a Wile
How I might at my leisure lurk,
My graceless Guardain to beguile.1695, J.D. Albany, The Banishment of poverty
- Synonyms:
- bethink, mull, quander, afterthink, agitate, call to mind, chew, chew over, chew the cud, cogitate
- But when I dred that wou'd not work,
Noun
overthinking (countable and uncountable, plural overthinkings)
- The act of thinking too much about something.
Forms of overthinking
| plural | overthinkings |
|---|
Questions about overthinking
- What does overthinking mean?
- Overthinking means the act of thinking too much about something.
- What is overthinking the present participle and gerund of?
- Overthinking is the present participle and gerund of overthink.
- What part of speech is overthinking?
- Overthinking is a noun.
- What is the plural of overthinking?
- The plural of overthinking is overthinkings.
Words near overthinking in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overthinking (page history and authors); overthink (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: en-us-overthinking.ogg.
Cite this entry: “overthinking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overthinking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.