overweight

Adjective

overweight (comparative more overweight, superlative most overweight)

1. Having a higher weight, especially body fat, than what is generally considered healthy for a given body type and height.
   • Before her diet, Jane was noticeably overweight, but she shed five kilos in the next two months.
2. Weighing more than what is allowed for safety or legal commerce.
   • All States allow oversized vehicles if a special permit is obtained, although most States will grant overweight permits only for non-divisible loads.1988, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Gearing Up for Safety: Motor Carrier Safety in a Competitive Environment, →ISBN, page 38
   • He got as far as the first weigh station, where troopers found his truck to be overweight and threatened to pull him off the road.1993, Legacy in the Sand: Chemical Command in Operations Desert Shield & Desert Storm, →ISBN, page 74

   Synonyms:

   fat, morbidly obese, obese, overnourished

3. Having a portfolio relatively heavily invested in.
   • Our portfolio is very overweight (in) Asian technology stocks.

Noun

UK/ˈəʊvəweɪt/US/ˈoʊvɚweɪt/

overweight (countable and uncountable, plural overweights)

1. (uncountable) An excess of weight.
   • […] and shall pay not only the amount of the permit fee for overlength, overheight, overwidth or overweight as might be due, but an additional civil penalty of fifty dollars for the first offense, one hundred dollars for the second offense and one hundred fifty dollars for each additional offense...1976, Acts of the Legislature, volume 1, Louisiana, page 445
   • It is clear that a bird would certainly be grounded by overweight if it retained eggs in the body and discharged them in large numbers at one time, like a turtle[.]1985, J.D. McDonald, Australian Birds: A Popular Guide to Bird Life, Sydney: Reed Books, page 66
2. (uncountable) The condition of being overweight.
   • SCHOOL MEAL ISSUES FOR CHILDREN AT RISK FOR OVERWEIGHT2007, Josephine Martin, Charlotte Oakley, Managing child nutrition programs: leadership for excellence, page 462
3. (countable) An overweight person.
   • The study provides up-to-date facts on the variety of diseases, vascular, metabolic, hepatic, and other, which are responsible for the excess mortality of overweights.1951, Louis Israel Dublin, Mortality Among Insured Overweights in Recent Years, Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors of America, →OCLC, page 28
   • Singh found that the normal weight figures were judged more attractive than the underweights‚ who were more attractive than the overweights.1998, Adrian Furnham, Melanie Dias, Alastair McClelland, “The role of body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast size in judgments of female attractiveness”, in Sex roles, volume 39, number 3...

   Synonyms:

   adiposity, obesity

4. (countable) A security or class of securities in which one has a heavy concentration.
   • Apple common stock is one of our overweights.

Verb

overweight (third-person singular simple present overweights, present participle overweighting, simple past and past participle overweighted)

1. (transitive) To weigh down: to put too heavy a burden on.
   • Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and over-weight our feeble reason till it fell and we were drowned in the depths of our own vanity.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
   • By noon the fat, perspiring, and importantly busy merchant arrives, overweighted with red blood, fat, and responsibility, for a game of manille or dominoes with three or four old cronies.1916, F[rank] Berkeley Smith, Babette: A Novel, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 240
2. (transitive) To place excessive weight or emphasis on; to overestimate the importance of.
   • We also over-weight such vaine future conjectures, which infant-spirits give us.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
   • Kinnel explained it, the problem at Select High Income was that it overweighted mortgage bonds and underweighted other types of corporate debt, a strategy that backfired when the mortgage market collapsed.2009 January 11, Geraldine Fabrikant, “How Safe Is That Nest Egg, Anyhow?”, in New York Times