overstate

English

WOTD – 24 January 2009

Etymology

over- +‎ state.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌəʊ.vəˈsteɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌoʊ.vɚˈsteɪt/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (AU)

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Verb

overstate (third-person singular simple present overstates, present participle overstating, simple past and past participle overstated)

1. To exaggerate; to state or claim too much.

   I think it is overstating matters to say that an hour online is spending all night on the computer.

   He was suggested not to overstate at the interview.

   • 1963 July, “News and Comment: Dr. Beeching's overstatement”, in Modern Railways, page 3:

     In a closely reasoned article in The Guardian, Mr. D. L. Munby, Oxford University's Reader in the Economics and Organisation of Transport, has taken Dr. Beeching to task for overstating his case for withdrawing stopping train services as money-losers.

   • 2021 June 9, Peter Beaumont, “Leading biologist dampens his ‘smoking gun’ Covid lab leak theory”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     A Nobel prize-winning US biologist, who has been widely quoted describing a “smoking gun” to support the thesis that Covid-19 was genetically modified and escaped from a Wuhan lab, has said he overstated the case.

Synonyms

• exaggerate
• overdo

Antonyms

• understate

Derived terms

• overstatement

Translations

to exaggerate; to state or claim too much

• Bashkir: арттырыу (arttırıw)
• Bulgarian: преувеличавам (bg) (preuveličavam)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 誇張／夸张 (zh) (kuāzhāng), 誇大／夸大 (zh) (kuādà), 言過其實／言过其实 (zh) (yánguò-qíshí)

• Czech: přehánět (cs)
• Finnish: liioitella (fi)
• French: exagérer (fr)
• German: übertreiben (de)
• Scottish Gaelic: cuir am meud
• Serbo-Croatian: pretjerati (sh), pretjerivati (sh)
• Spanish: exagerar (es)
• Ukrainian: перебі́льшувати impf (perebílʹšuvaty), перебі́льшити pf (perebílʹšyty)