overwound
overwound is the simple past and past participle of overwind.
Meaning of overwind
Verb
overwind (third-person singular simple present overwinds, present participle overwinding, simple past and past participle overwound)
- To wind (tighten a spring of) something excessively.
- People also come in full of misgivings about "overwinding" their watches. "You can't overwind a watch - you can only underwind it," said McKelvey.1989 July 4, Jacquin Sanders, “What makes a watchmaker tick?”, in St. Petersburg Times
- To twist (itself) more tightly.
- DNA's helical structure implies that twisting and stretching should be coupled, hence the prediction that DNA should unwind when stretched […] That is why it was such surprise when we directly measured twist-stretch coupling to find instead DNA overwinds when stretched.2006 August 7, “Surprise Finding for Stretched DNA. [summary]”, in Ascribe Higher Education News Service
Adjective
overwound (comparative more overwound, superlative most overwound)
- Nervous, tense, jumpy.
- Everyone else Christian had had anything to do with, ever since the bad night outside Alexandria, had seemed to be overwound, jumpy, bitter, hysterical, overtired...1949, Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions
- He has left his class, at least in spirit, by being in certain ways unusual; and he is still unusual in another class, too tense and overwound.1957, Richard Hoggart, The Uses Of Literacy
Forms of overwound
| comparative | more overwound |
|---|---|
| superlative | most overwound |
Origin of overwound
From over- + wound.
Words that rhyme with overwound
45 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- abound
- bound
- hound
- profound
- impound
- unbound
- underground
- crowned
- found
- remound
- surround
- unsound
- aground
- embrowned
- expound
- gound
- overground
- sqround
- surround sound
- unconfound
- uncrowned
- astound
- baffound
- below ground
- blound
- browned
- charging the mound
- clowned
- downed
- drowned
- found sound
- frowned
- gowned
- interwound
- lb
- newfound
- playaround
- reground
- renowned
- rewound
- unfound
- unrenowned
- unwound
- wound
- York round
Questions about overwound
- What does overwound mean?
- Overwound means nervous, tense, jumpy.
- What is overwound the simple past and past participle of?
- Overwound is the simple past and past participle of overwind.
- What part of speech is overwound?
- Overwound is an adjective.
Words near overwound in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overwound (page history and authors); overwind (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overwound.wav.
Cite this entry: “overwound.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overwound. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.