Word.ws English Dictionary

overwise

overwise adjective: excessively wise; too clever for one's own good.

Adjective

overwise (comparative more overwise, superlative most overwise)

  1. Excessively wise; too clever for one's own good.
    • “Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn’t go a-nigh the place. No!” observed the young man, with considerable feeling; “he ain’t overwise, ain’t Perkins, but he ain’t such a fool as that.”1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House

Forms of overwise

comparativemore overwise
superlativemost overwise
alternative formover wise

Origin of overwise

From Middle English overe-wyse, over wise, equivalent to over- + wise.

Words formed from overwise

Questions about overwise

What does overwise mean?
Overwise means excessively wise; too clever for one's own good.
What part of speech is overwise?
Overwise is an adjective.

Words near overwise in the dictionary

  1. overwire
  2. overwired
  3. overwires
  4. overwiring
  5. overwisdom
  6. overwise
  7. overwisely
  8. overwit
  9. overwithered
  10. overwithheld
  11. overwithhold

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overwise (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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