Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use overestimate in a sentence

16 example sentences · verb, noun

Overestimate means to judge or calculate too highly. Example: “I overestimated the number of attendees, and bought far too much food for the party.”

Examples of overestimate by meaning

verbTo judge or calculate too highly.

  • I overestimated the number of attendees, and bought far too much food for the party.
  • Nevertheless, the role played by vertical transport (in particular, by biosedimentation) in self-purification of seas and oceans from chlorinated hydrocarbons must not be overestimated.2016, S.A. Patin, Pollution and the Biological Resources of the Oceans, →ISBN, page 48
  • One must be especially careful when using Google to determine frequency as there is a very real risk of fantastically overestimating the frequency and subsequent importance of a term.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 15

nounAn estimate that is too high.

  • The employment projection for the metropolitan area for 1985 was an overestimate by about 12 percent.2013, Peter Karl Kresl, Jaime Sobrino, Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Urban Economies
  • The department pointed to a study it conducted in 2017 that found that, in some states, overestimates of utility costs were giving some people too many food stamps, while in others, people were getting too few.2019 April 10, Lola Fadulu, “Trump Administration Unveils More Cuts to Food Stamp Program”, in The New York Times

More sentences with overestimate

  • It is absolutely impossible to overestimate how upset people were by sarong-gate, particularly the tabloid media.2025 May 2, Zoe Williams, Sarah Gilbert, “David Beckham at 50: his gorgeous, outrageous life in 50 pictures”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry sarong
  • And policies rooted in overestimating globalization — “globaloney” — could harm the people they purport to protect.2017 February 3, Pankaj Ghemawat, Steven A. Altman, “Is America enriching the world at its own expense? That’s globaloney.”, in Washington…. From the entry globaloney
  • Anaximander's interest in cosmogony has been vastly overestimated, and his achievements consistently mispraised.2010, Paul F. O'Rourke (quoting Jonathan Barnes), Offerings to the Discerning Eye, Sue D'Auria (ed.), p. 247 n.25 (Google preview). From the entry mispraise
  • I do not overestimate him — by the name of Johannes Scherr.1991, Rudolf Steiner, Social Issues: Meditative Thinking and the Threefold Social Order, →ISBN. From the entry blustering
  • The combination of minimal self-awareness and dim wattage leads sufferers of this condition to overestimate their own capabilities.2022, Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil, Crown, →ISBN. From the entry wattage
  • Local boards overestimate options open to the Department of Education, a provincial leader says: There's a provinceful of auditors.1995, Kenneth Leithwood, Effective School District Leadership: Transforming Politics into Education, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 171. From the entry provinceful
  • Khrushchev made a grave miscalculation when he failed to appreciate the growing opposition to his power and overestimated the support of his bureaucracy.2017, Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society, page 80. From the entry grave
  • Don't give overweightage to other people's views about you as to whether they know your calibre or capabilities or whether they overestimate or underestimate you.1995, M. K. Gupta, How To Remain Ever Happy. From the entry overweightage
  • If we have a beta decay that suffers from the pandemonium effect, the mean gamma energies will be underestimated and the beta energies will be overestimated.2012, Amir Mesquita, Nuclear Reactors, page 78. From the entry pandemonium effect
  • The crux of the economists’ arguments was that financial services companies were overestimating the percentage of preretirement income needed to live well when no longer working.2007 March 17, Damon Darlin, “Some More Numbers to Juggle in Figuring Out Retirement”, in New York Times. From the entry preretirement
  • Virtually every test we've done in the past 5 years suggests true polar wander has been overestimated," says paleomagnetician John Tarduno of the University of Rochester, New York.2000 January 21, Richard A. Kerr, “GEOPHYSICS:Did the Dinosaurs Live on a Topsy-Turvy Earth?”, in Science, volume 287, number 5452, →DOI…. From the entry paleomagnetician

Meaning of overestimate

  1. verb To judge or calculate too highly.
  2. noun An estimate that is too high.

Full definition of overestimate

Questions about overestimate in a sentence

How do you use overestimate in a sentence?
Overestimate is used as a verb and noun. For example: “I overestimated the number of attendees, and bought far too much food for the party.”
What is a short sentence with overestimate?
“I do not overestimate him — by the name of Johannes Scherr.”
What does overestimate mean?
Overestimate means to judge or calculate too highly.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overestimate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use overestimate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/overestimate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.