Word.ws English Dictionary

overtrap

overtrap verb: to put too many traps in (an area) or among (an animal population), and thus to trap too many (animals, for their population to recover).

Verb

overtrap (third-person singular simple present overtraps, present participle overtrapping, simple past and past participle overtrapped)

  1. To put too many traps in (an area) or among (an animal population), and thus to trap too many (animals, for their population to recover).
    • [...] from the Europeans, they began to overtrap the forests in search of pelts to trade. To overtrap is to kill too many animals, causing the animal population to decrease.2005, Janet Palazzo-Craig, The Ojibwe of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, →ISBN, page 33
    • Overtrapping can occur under some situations, but it has been the experience of trappers and marsh-owners generally that it is almost impossible to overtrap a normal muskrat population. It is far better to overtrap an area than to undertrap it. Keep populations of predators, as foxes, raccoons, and...1950, Circular

Examples of overtrap in a sentence

  • Overtrapping can occur under some situations, but it has been the experience of trappers and marsh-owners generally that it is almost impossible to overtrap a normal muskrat population.1950, Circular:
  • That's one reason why you can overtrap a territory, too.1952, American Woodsman:

Forms of overtrap

third-person singular presentovertraps
present participleovertrapping
past participleovertrapped
pastovertrapped

Origin of overtrap

From over- + trap.

Questions about overtrap

What does overtrap mean?
Overtrap means to put too many traps in (an area) or among (an animal population), and thus to trap too many (animals, for their population to recover).
How do you use overtrap in a sentence?
Overtrapping can occur under some situations, but it has been the experience of trappers and marsh-owners generally that it is almost impossible to overtrap a normal muskrat population.
What part of speech is overtrap?
Overtrap is a verb.
What is the past tense of overtrap?
The past tense of overtrap is overtrapped.

Words near overtrap in the dictionary

  1. overtranslation
  2. overtranslations
  3. overtransmission
  4. overtransmit
  5. overtransmitted
  6. overtrap
  7. overtrapped
  8. overtrapping
  9. overtraps
  10. overtravel
  11. overtread

Source and license

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