Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To shoot or pass over or beyond.
- intransitive verb To miss by or as if by shooting, hitting, or propelling something too far.
- intransitive verb To fly beyond or past; overrun.
- intransitive verb To go beyond; exceed.
- intransitive verb To shoot or go too far.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To shoot over, as water on a wheel.
- To shoot or go beyond; fly beyond; hence, to exceed; overstep.
- To shoot over or beyond, as a mark.
- To shoot over or too far; hence, to overstep due bounds in any respect.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To fly beyond the mark.
- transitive verb To shoot over or beyond; to miss.
- transitive verb To go beyond an intended point or limit.
- transitive verb To pass swiftly over; to fly beyond.
- transitive verb To exceed.
- transitive verb to venture too far; to assert too much.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable The amount by which something goes too far.
- noun countable, ecology When the population of a species exceeds its environment's carrying capacity.
- verb To go too far.
- verb To
shoot too far.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb shoot beyond or over (a target)
- noun an approach that fails and gives way to another attempt
- verb aim too high
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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The report says the overshoot is largely due to carbon emissions, and now accounts for half of humanity's ecological footprint.
2030: The date we need to double our Earth Melissa Bell 2010
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The gist of the post, written by a Canadian soil scientist, is that the Earth's human population has basically been in overshoot mode ever since early civilizations put down their bows, atlatls and spears in favor of hoes and plows.
On Hunting and Apocalypse Dave Hurteau 2008
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Humanity has probably been in overshoot of the Earth's carrying capacity since it abandoned hunter gathering in favor of crop cultivation (~ 8,000 BCE) and it has been running up its ecological debt since that time.
On Hunting and Apocalypse Dave Hurteau 2008
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This is increasing the risks of a near-term overshoot for the euro.
unknown title 2011
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
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In the long run the stock market is a weighing machine, so the short-term overshoot will correct itself eventually.
bilby commented on the word overshoot
"Increasingly, environmental scientists insist we have overshot the Earth's carrying capacity. I believe they are right; the proof is everywhere. Our inability to live as we do, at our current numbers, without causing pervasive environmental degradation is the very definition of carrying capacity overshoot.
Overshoot, we know, is followed by population decline. As we have learned form other species, this manifests itself initially with a crash."
- John Feeney, Population: The elephant in the room, BBC website, 2 Feb 2009.
February 3, 2009