Word.ws English Dictionary

Overton window

Overton window noun: the range of ideas that the public will accept, i.e. those ideas that are not considered too extreme or radical.

Noun

Overton window (plural Overton windows)

  1. The range of ideas that the public will accept, i.e. those ideas that are not considered too extreme or radical.
    • Nor is he the only one of his kind—on all sides of the spectrum, there are individuals like Mike, shaping what we read, setting the Overton Window in our political debate, stirring things up and laughing (and profiting) as we freak out about it.2012, Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, Penguin, →ISBN, page 258
    • And yet, despite all this, a society can change completely in a few decades. The Overton window can shift. A classic strategy for achieving this is to proclaim ideas so shocking and subversive that anything less radical suddenly sounds sensible.2017, Elizabeth Manton, transl., “epilogue”, in Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, translation of Gratis geld voor iedereen by Rutger Bregman, page 255
    Synonyms:
    window of discourse, opinion corridor

Synonyms of Overton window

Forms of Overton window

pluralOverton windows

Origin of Overton window

Named after American political scientist Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), former vice-president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The concept was popularized by the 2010 bestselling novel The Overton Window.

Questions about Overton window

What does Overton window mean?
Overton window means the range of ideas that the public will accept, i.e. those ideas that are not considered too extreme or radical.
What part of speech is Overton window?
Overton window is a noun.
What is the plural of Overton window?
The plural of Overton window is Overton windows.

Words near Overton window in the dictionary

  1. overtoiling
  2. overtoils
  3. overtold
  4. Overton
  5. Overton County
  6. Overton window
  7. Overton windows
  8. overtone
  9. overtone singing
  10. overtoned
  11. overtones

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Overton window (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)-Eleanorrrrrrrrrr-Overton Window.wav.

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