Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Excessively nervous or excited; agitated.
- adjective Extremely elaborate or ornate; overdone.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Worked too hard or too much.
- Worked up or excited to excess; overexcited: as overwrought feelings, imagination, etc.
- Worked all over; covered with decorative work: as, a garment overwrought with embroidered flowers.
- Labored or elaborated to excess; overdone.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- past participle Wrought upon excessively; overworked.
- past participle Extremely agitated or excited; overexcited; -- of people.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective in a state of excessive nervousness, excitement, or anger; Extremely tense, anxious, or upset; filled with emotion, emotional; uneasy
- adjective elaborate; overdone
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective deeply agitated especially from emotion
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Best of all, she's got a playful sensibility that keeps the covers from getting bogged down in overwrought gravitas, no matter the subject.
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That last label is the funniest of the three because a story about a notorious miser visited by four ghosts who scare the hell out of him to make him change his life is by definition overwrought.
Lev Raphael: Does A Christmas Carol Really Need to be Rescued?
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Tademy's bold, controlled account of these horrific events never shies away from the gruesome facts, or becomes overwrought, which is a remarkable feat considering her emotional attachment to the story and its characters.
Red River: Summary and book reviews of Red River by Lalita Tademy.
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I would be so excited about my latest acquisition that I would start to read in the car a habit that always triggered my motion sickness, but I didn't care, and then, the second I got home, sign my name in overwrought cursive on the inside cover.
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This is the kind of overwrought, underreported business story I expect to see in Fortune magazine, not my local business journal.
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Not sure how that became "overwrought" in your mind, but maybe we've misunderstood each other.
Science fiction's subordination - Suvudu - Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, Movies, and Games
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Opera Tattler finds the characters caricatures and the production "overwrought," with the music unfocussed and too much in the background.
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Pleased to see that I was at "overwrought" before J. Hoberman got there.
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And insofar as we might say that the poetry of emotion is synonymous with its expression in language, then it becomes clear that writing from a place of the 'overwrought', the 'cheap', the 'excessive', the 'insufficient' and the 'incapable' is actually also writing from a place of abjection women writers are consigned to in a kind of categorical quarantine.
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Opera Tattler finds the characters caricatures and the production "overwrought," with the music unfocussed and too much in the background.
qroqqa commented on the word overwrought
Jim: Do any of them say anything other than tired and emotional?
Bernard: William Hickey said you were overwrought, Minister.
Jim: Just overwrought, nothing about being drunk.
Bernard: Just overwrought.
Sir Humphrey: Overwrought as a newt actually.
—'The Economy Drive', Yes Minister
July 30, 2008
bilby commented on the word overwrought
Top citation, qroqqa. What a show that was!
July 30, 2008