over the top
See also: over-the-top
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]The adjectival form first appears c. 1935. See cite below. The adverbial form (in reference to World War I) first appears c. 1915.
Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Adjective
[edit]over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)
- (idiomatic) Beyond normal, expected, or reasonable limits; outrageous.
- Synonyms: excessive, exaggerated, OTT, too much
- 1938, Lincoln Steffens, Granville Hicks, Carl Sandburg, The Letters of Lincoln Steffens, Volume 2, page 1007:
- I had come to regard the New Capitalism as an experiment till, in 1929, the whole thing went over the top and slid down to an utter collapse.
- 2015 February 23, “Oscars 2015: 10 things we learned”, in The Guardian (London)[1]:
- You might have expected a pop star known for shows in which she has someone vomit paint on to the stage to come up with something similarly over the top for a live rendition of The Sound of Music. But Gaga chose to take the traditional route.
- 2007 August 26, Bruce Jenkins, “The Chronicle Sports Columnist Blog”, in San Francisco Chronicle[2], archived from the original on 10 December 2007:
- Myers went over the top in the clubhouse, berating a reporter who questioned Myers' terminology.
- (communication) Delivered across the Internet to a television or similar device.
- 2004 August 18, “ARRIS Investor Conference Webcast - Final”, in Fair Disclosure Wire:
- The question was you don't have to hard cut the network over from proprietary to open. You can actually do it in stages and this device can lay over the top of existing proprietary networks.
- 2005 February 4, “Q4 2004 Time Warner Inc. Earnings Conference Call - Final”, in Fair Disclosure Wire:
- Back to the BYOA strategy, that we'll continue to create, you know, a BYOA product that we sell over the top, is that there will be a lot of customers that will want to do business with us that way.
- (agriculture, of agrichemical application) Downward onto plants in the field, as contrasted with other routes of administration.
- over-the-top dicamba for dicamba-tolerant crops
See also
[edit]- (communications): set-top box
- (from above, onto the top): top-down
Adverb
[edit]over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)
- Egregiously; beyond compare.
- 2025 July 10, Jesus Mesa, “'We've Been Played': MAGA Faces Its Own Disappointment With Trump”, in Newsweek[3]:
- On InfoWars, Alex Jones told his audience, "This is over the top sickening. Next they'll say Jeffrey Epstein never even existed. This is the swamp winning. No one is buying this."
Usage notes
[edit]- Over the top (unhyphenated) occurs only following a copula as the object of a sentence, as above, whereas over-the-top (hyphenated) is attributive, that is, it is used where the adjective occurs before the word it modifies, as in, "He gave an over-the-top performance".
Translations
[edit]beyond normal, expected, or reasonable limits; excessive; exaggerated
|
Adverb
[edit]over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)
- (not comparable, World War I) Over the parapet of a trench, especially at the start of a futile attack.
- The men were sent over the top to their certain death.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see over, the, top.
References
[edit]- "over the top" in the Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
- Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.
Further reading
[edit]
over-the-top media service on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
