Definitions

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

  • Excessively emphatic.

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

  • adjective Excessively emphatic, particularly in musical or theatrical interpretation

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

over- +‎ emphatic

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word overemphatic.

Examples

  • He and Ms. Cattrall have terrific onstage chemistry, and their romantic scenes couldn't be sexier, but whenever the tone of "Private Lives" turns comic, her overemphatic, inadequately varied delivery undercuts the humor.

    When Coward's Amanda Turns Cougar Terry Teachout 2011

  • Ian Rickson, who staged the noisy Royal Court production of "The Seagull" that transferred to Broadway in 2008, is grappling here with a piece of material better suited to his overemphatic directorial style.

    Their Lives of Loud Desperation Terry Teachout 2011

  • Squitieri, an alumna of WNO's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, was a little overemphatic as Beatrice, stripped of her prototype's smoldering mystery, but had some lovely vocal moments.

    Domingo's tenor lifts respectable, but too literal, 'Il Postino' by Daniel Catán Anne Midgette 2010

  • Throughout his career, Cole's trouble has always been an overemphatic desire to justify his existence.

    Joe Cole's exit forces Liverpool to rely on age-old strengths Richard Williams at Anfield 2010

  •          Coudreau's head jerked from side to side, discomfited, overemphatic.

    The Warden 2010

  • The first movement of the symphony was fine on Friday night, but after that the wheels started coming off, and by the end of the performance the symphony was an overemphatic, wrongheaded, confusing mess.

    Luisotti's Brahms and Davies After Hours sfmike 2009

  • She's too willful an actress, tight and overemphatic; like The Constant Gardener itself, which suffered from an almost masochistic didacticism making its political points.

    Oscar Day: James Wolcott Wolcott, James, 1952- 2009

  • In Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, Glenn Kenny finds "a solid account of how the curator and patron Sam Wagstaff defined photography as an art form for the 20th century ... he picture is good or better on the art-historical stuff, but when chronicling Wagstaff's 'dark' side it's a bit overemphatic."

    GreenCine Daily: Tribeca, 5/2. 2007

  • The first movement of the symphony was fine on Friday night, but after that the wheels started coming off, and by the end of the performance the symphony was an overemphatic, wrongheaded, confusing mess.

    Archive 2009-03-01 sfmike 2009

  • In a typical example, a reviewer for Time magazine wrote that Carson's case was 'unfair, one-sided, and hysterically overemphatic'.

    Rachel Carson's environmental ethics 2008

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.