overwash

overwash verb: to wash too much or too often.

Verb

overwash (third-person singular simple present overwashes, present participle overwashing, simple past and past participle overwashed)

(transitive) To wash too much or too often.
- Even worse than being caught in daylight is the mortification, by Mr. Moore’s nocturnal lights, of wearing black clothes so overwashed that they start to look gray.2007 January 15, Janet Maslin, “The Vampire Wears Flannel, and He Cheats on His Tan”, in New York Times
(transitive) To wash or flood over.
- The waves overwashed the stony beach.
(intransitive) To become flooded.
- A man on one of the beach islands sends his wife and kids to the shelter, remains behind with their dog to finish boarding up the house, then the only road off the island overwashes, and he's cut off.1998, Lee Gutkind, A view from the divide, page 104

overwash (countable and uncountable, plural overwashes)

The flow of water and sediment over the crest of a beach that does not directly return to the water body.

Verb
third-person singular present	overwashes
present participle	overwashing
past participle	overwashed
past	overwashed
Noun
plural	overwashes

From over- + wash.

What does overwash mean?: Overwash means to wash too much or too often.
What part of speech is overwash?: Overwash can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of overwash?: The past tense of overwash is overwashed.

Adapted from Wiktionary: overwash (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “overwash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overwash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.