over-egg

English

Verb

over-egg (third-person singular simple present over-eggs, present participle over-egging, simple past and past participle over-egged)

1. Alternative form of overegg
   • 1839 September, Nimrod [pseudonym; Charles James Apperley], “A Hunting Tour in the Midland Counties: The Quorn: The Belvoir: And the Cottesmore”, in Craven [pseudonym; John William Carleton], editor, The Sporting Review, a Monthly Chronicle of the Turf, the Chase, and Rural Sports in All Their Varieties, London: Rudolph Ackermann, […], →OCLC, page 187:

     But hard riding men, in strange countries, are apt now and then to over-egg the pudding, as the Yorkshire landlord told his Grace of Cleveland.

   • 1983 October 8, Ian Davidson, “As they were [review of Kissinger: The Price of Power by Seymour M. Hersh]”, in Financial Times, number 29,140, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 12, column 3:

     [Seymour] Hersh vilifies the [Richard] Nixon–[Henry] Kissinger team for the way they adapted the handling of the Vietnam "peace" talks to the sordid claims of the presidential election time-table, but he over-eggs the omelette. It is reasonable to criticise them for having pretended to the American people (and perhaps themselves) that there was some way to negotiate a peace which would preserve the independence of south Vietnam. It is not reasonable to argue, as Hersh does, that the U.S. might have been able to bomb its way to such a durable peace in the spring of 1973, if the White House had not been hamstrung by the debilitating effects of the Watergate scandal.

   • 1997, Vivien Allen, chapter 24, in Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Sheffield Academic Press, →ISBN, page 353:

     [Hall] Caine over-eggs the omelette but it is still a strong story.