overworked

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)kt

Etymology 1

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *úp

Proto-Indo-European *-er

Proto-Indo-European *upér

Proto-Germanic *uber

Old English ofer-

Middle English over-

English over-

English worked

English overworked

From over- + worked.

Adjective

overworked (comparative more overworked, superlative most overworked)

1. Subjected to too much work.

   Hyponyms: burnt out, exhausted

   Overworked and underpaid? Then quit your job and become a pro darts player.

   • 2013 October 19, “Preparing for success”, in The Economist, volume 409, number 8858:

     Miss Suu Kyi’s overworked advisers […] argue that people have to be realistic about what can be achieved in a short time and on a slender budget.

   • 2020, Sophie Lewis, “Collective Turn-off”, in Mal‎^[1]:

     The truth is that we are too overworked, under capitalism, to be deeply, collectively horny, too overworked even to realise that this is the case.

2. (figurative, of a word, phrase, etc.) Having been overused such that it has lost its meaning; trite; banal.

   Synonyms: clichéd, overdone, overused; see also Thesaurus:hackneyed

   overworked, unaffecting cliches

   • 2009 July 23, Michael White, “Don't let Anthony Blunt fool us again”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     [Tim Garton Ash] is what you might call—overworked phrase—a public intellectual.

   • 2015 January 18, Mariella Frostrup, “I don’t know how to move on from my first boyfriend”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     Dare I say “Let it go” without images of an animated princess flashing before your eyes? If it was an overworked phrase before Frozen, it’s now hard to use the expression without a shudder.

Derived terms

• overworkedness

Translations

subjected to too much work

• Czech: přepracovaný m
• Dutch: overwerkt (nl), overbelast (nl)
• Finnish: ylityöllistetty
• French: débordé (fr), surmené (fr)
• German: überarbeitet (de)
• Polish: przepracowany
• Russian: заработавшийся (ru) (zarabotavšijsja), переработавший (ru) (pererabotavšij)
• Swedish: överansträngd (sv), utarbetad (sv)

Etymology 2

From overwork + -ed.

Verb

overworked

1. simple past and past participle of overwork

Anagrams

• worked over