overegg

See also: over-egg

English

WOTD – 13 October 2024

Etymology

From over- (prefix meaning ‘excessive; excessively’) +‎ egg, from the phrase over-egg the pudding, a reference to adding too many eggs to a pudding and thereby ruining it.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌəʊvəɹˈɛɡ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌoʊvəɹˈɛɡ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛɡ
• Hyphenation: over‧egg

Verb

overegg (third-person singular simple present overeggs, present participle overegging, simple past and past participle overegged)

1. (transitive, idiomatic, originally UK, regional) Chiefly in over-egg the pudding: to spoil (something) by exaggerating it, or an aspect of it; to overdo.

   Synonyms: gild the lily, go overboard, take too far

   • 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.

   • 1991, Glen Balfour-Paul, “Comparisons, without Odium”, in The End of Empire in the Middle East: Britain’s Relinquishment of Power in Her Last Three Arab Dependencies, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, published 1992, →ISBN, page 162:

     [M]any British officials, as David Holden deduced from conversations with them in the Crescent bar in the mid-fifties, were 'afflicted with a familiar form of colonial myopia known as localitis' – […] Maybe Holden slightly overeggs the pudding.

   • 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.

   • 2014 July 26, “Argentina’s debt saga: Unsettling times: The clock is ticking toward an Argentine default”, in The Economist‎^[1], London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-07-25:

     NML [Capital] insists Argentina is overegging the RUFO [rights upon future offers] worry: given that the country has appealed its case all the way up to the Supreme Court and been rebuffed, a judge is unlikely to deem any deal "voluntary".

   • 2017 December 22, Laura Cappelle, “2 French playwrights reclaim their works, bringing them home”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2024-08-23:

     The men [in Pascal Rambert's play Actrice (2015)] fare less well: The husbands of both sisters overegg their Russian accents, with Jakob Öhrman, as the boisterous Pavel, left to utter inanities including, "The truth is in my alcoholism."

   • 2019 August 15, Bob Stanley, “‘Groovy, groovy, groovy’: Listening to Woodstock 50 years on – all 38 discs”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎^[3], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2024-05-08:

     Janis Joplin sounds unerringly like Ray Stevens' Bridget the Midget in places. While Raise Your Hand is a pretty undeniable Stax-on-helium workout, her version of the Bee Gees' To Love Somebody is overegged.

Alternative forms

• over-egg

Derived terms

• overegged, over-egged (adjective)

Related terms

• overegg the pudding, over-egg the pudding

Translations

to spoil (something) by exaggerating it, or an aspect of it — see overdo

Further reading

• “overegg”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.