How to use overwrite in a sentence
15 example sentences · verb, noun
Overwrite means to destroy (older) data by recording new data over it. Example: “I accidentally saved my unwanted changes and overwrote the version of the document I wanted to keep.”
Examples of overwrite by meaning
verbTo destroy (older) data by recording new data over it.
- I accidentally saved my unwanted changes and overwrote the version of the document I wanted to keep.
verbTo write too much.
- This is often not the case and overwriting can lead to vague and muddled features that confuse the reader and ultimately lose their interest.2013, Richard Rudin, Trevor Ibbotson, Introduction to Journalism
verbTo write in an unnecessarily complicated or florid way; to produce purple prose.
- The Times of course has to pay the price of encyclopaedism by being often dreadfully overwritten, with long paragraphs connected by motley conjunctions.1954, Edwin H. Ford, Edwin Emery, Highlights in the History of the American Press: A Book of Readings, U of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 367
- He overwrites constantly, but his detailed and understated one-paragraph description of Monroe's apartment in New York (pp. 216-18) injects high voltage into the de casibus tradition.1986, David Novarr, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880-1970, Purdue University Press, →ISBN, page 162
- It is too adjectival, a stylistic flaw which suggests an insistence more apparent in the ensuing lines (182-91), where one is torn between thinking that Shelley is overwriting and that he is staying close to a feverish intensity.1989, Michael O'Neill, The human mind's imaginings: conflict and achievement in Shelley's poetry, Oxford University Press, USA
nounThe operation of destroying older data by recording new data over it.
- Tab to the number specifying the number of overwrites and enter a number between 1 and 9.2014, Bruce Middleton, Conducting Network Penetration and Espionage in a Global Environment
More sentences with overwrite
- The autogenerated code should not be edited, since it may be automatically overwritten by the same process.From the entry autogenerate
- A file with the read-only attribute set cannot be overwritten.From the entry attribute
- Having saved header.php, I FTPed it back to the Sandbox theme folder, overwriting the old version.2008, Paul Thewlis, WordPress for Business Bloggers. From the entry FTP
- For a critic to declare these lines overadjectived and overwritten would not be a matter for surprise.1986, Richard Poole, Richard Hughes: Novelist, Poetry Wales Press, →ISBN, page 93. From the entry overadjectived
- Our empathetic connections with other people get completely overwritten by the sort of "memeplex" that's overwriting our world.”2021 August 15, Hayley Garrigus, 38:30 from the start, in You Can't Kill Meme, spoken by self (Hayley Garrigus). From the entry memeplex
- We need to go through and edit our action lines; there's no need to overwrite them or overdescribe things.2018, Neil Landau, TV Writing On Demand: Creating Great Content in the Digital Era, →ISBN. From the entry overdescribe
- Arbitrary memory overwrite, also known as the "write-what-where" vulnerability, is the most common vulnerability affecting Windows kernel drivers.2010, Enrico Perla, Massimiliano Oldani, A Guide to Kernel Exploitation: Attacking the Core, page 308. From the entry write-what-where
- Logging can be used to back out bad data, be it an overwrite of existing data or an append of new data.2007, Jeff LeSueur, Marketing Automation: Practical Steps to More Effective Direct Marketing, →ISBN. From the entry append
- The disability needs to be “ablesplained” by a medical authority—and these explanations often usurp the voice or perspective of the narrator and overwrite their identity in scientific and pathological terms.2016, Jay Dolmage, Dale Jacobs, “Mutable Articulations: Disability Rhetorics and the Comics Medium”, in C. Foss, J. Gray, Zach Whalen…. From the entry ablesplain
Meaning of overwrite
- verb To destroy (older) data by recording new data over it.
- verb To cover in writing; to write over the top of.
- verb To write too much.
Questions about overwrite in a sentence
- How do you use overwrite in a sentence?
- Overwrite is used as a verb and noun. For example: “I accidentally saved my unwanted changes and overwrote the version of the document I wanted to keep.”
- What is a short sentence with overwrite?
- “A file with the read-only attribute set cannot be overwritten.”
- What does overwrite mean?
- Overwrite means to destroy (older) data by recording new data over it.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overwrite (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 overwrite in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/overwrite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.