Word.ws English Dictionary

overwrought

UK/əʊ.vəˈɹɔːt/

overwrought is the simple past and past participle of overwork.

Adjective

overwrought (comparative more overwrought, superlative most overwrought)

  1. Excessively nervous, excited, tense, angry, anxious, or upset; overemotional; very uneasy.
  2. Elaborate; baroque; overdone.
    • Her book includes an incisive discussion of misogyny on the New Right. [Laura K.] Field notes how “gynocracy” and “the longhouse” have become overwrought MAGA epithets for an unbearably feminized and pluralist society.2025 December 17, Jennifer Szalai, “The Intellectuals Fueling the MAGA Movement”, in The New York Times Book Review, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the...

Meaning of overwork

Verb

overwork (third-person singular simple present overworks, present participle overworking, simple past and past participle overworked or (archaic) overwrought)

  1. (transitive) To make (someone or something) work too hard.
    • to overwork a horse
  2. (intransitive) To work too hard.
  3. (transitive) To fill too full of work; to crowd with labour.
    • My days with toil are overwrought.1874, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Aigalades
  4. (transitive) To decorate all over.

See all 6 meanings of overwork

Synonyms of overwrought

Antonyms

10 more antonymsFewer antonyms

Forms of overwrought

comparativemore overwrought
superlativemost overwrought

Origin of overwrought

Past participle of overwork; equivalent to over- + wrought.

Words formed from overwrought

Questions about overwrought

What does overwrought mean?
Overwrought means excessively nervous, excited, tense, angry, anxious, or upset; overemotional; very uneasy.
What is overwrought the simple past and past participle of?
Overwrought is the simple past and past participle of overwork.
What part of speech is overwrought?
Overwrought is an adjective.
How do you pronounce overwrought?
Overwrought is pronounced /əʊ.vəˈɹɔːt/ (UK).

Words near overwrought in the dictionary

  1. overwriting
  2. overwritings
  3. overwritten
  4. overwrote
  5. overwroth
  6. overwrought
  7. overwroughtness
  8. Overy
  9. overyear
  10. overyeared
  11. overyearing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overwrought (page history and authors); overwork (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Qwertygiy-overwrought.wav.

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