Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To continue studying or practicing (something) after initial proficiency has been achieved so as to reinforce or ingrain the learned material or skill.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To learn (a fact or skill) repetitively, beyond the point where it can be immediately recalled; in experimental psychology, to continue to learn beyond the point where the criterion of adequate learning has been reached.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To learn (something) more than is necessary; to study excessively, to take (something) too much to heart.
  • verb psychology, education To learn (something) to the point where responses become instinctive.
  • verb Mostly when talking about neural networks, to learn a task to the point where responses actually start to degrade. Compare with overfit, in model tuning contexts.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From over- +‎ learn.

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Examples

  • He also worries AISight could overlearn, meaning it could eventually assume everything it sees is normal and send no alerts.

    chron.com Chronicle 2009

  • Morningside students don't just learn material, they "overlearn" it to the point of fluency: being able to respond accurately and fast.

    Machine Design - 2008

  • "Our caution to them is to not overlearn from 2008," he says.

    Resisting Gold's Glister Shefali Anand 2010

  • One of my early mentors, the writer and writing teacher Donald Murray, used to say "I try to underteach so my students can overlearn."

    On Education (Four): Process Bruce Schauble 2009

  • One of my early mentors, the writer and writing teacher Donald Murray, used to say "I try to underteach so my students can overlearn."

    Archive 2009-01-01 Bruce Schauble 2009

  • But it's possible to overlearn the lessons of the Swift Boat attack.

    Candidates Think Flip-Flopping is the Only Way to Win Elections 2008

  • To learn something new every day, and to overlearn those skills until you have them integrated at the level of unconscious competence.

    Z is for...Zero Tolerance Steven Barnes 2007

  • His motto, which I think is still instructive in the context of School 2.0, was that "I try to underteach so my students can overlearn."

    Archive 2007-02-01 Bruce Schauble 2007

  • To learn something new every day, and to overlearn those skills until you have them integrated at the level of unconscious competence.

    Archive 2007-10-01 Steven Barnes 2007

  • His motto, which I think is still instructive in the context of School 2.0, was that "I try to underteach so my students can overlearn."

    Meandering Bruce Schauble 2007

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