overprize
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From over- + prize. See overpraise.
Verb
[edit]overprize (third-person singular simple present overprizes, present participle overprizing, simple past and past participle overprized)
- (transitive) To prize excessively; to overvalue.
- 1651, Henry Wotton, “A Surveigh of Education”, in Reliquiae Wottonianae[1], London: R. Marriot, page 320:
- […] a very pardonable facility in the Parents themselves to overprize their own Children, while thy behold them through the vapors of affection which alter the appearance […]
- 1777, Granville Sharp, A Tract on the Law of Nature, and Principles of Action in Man, London: B. White and E. & C. Dilly, p. 120, note 42,[2]
- A Man apt to over-prize himself, and jealous withal of contempt, of wrong, or of gross abuse, is not so easily appeased with streams of blood, as a calm and gentle spirit is with an ingenuous acknowledgment of wrongs done, or with a courteous answer for wrongs suspected.
- 1862, Henry Chorley, “The Year 1838”, in Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections[3], volume I, London: Hurst & Blackett, pages 141–142:
- [Mr. Balfe] has the gift—now rare, in late days—of melody, and a certain facile humour for the stage, which can hardly be over-prized.
- 1983, John Gardner (American writer), On Becoming a Novelist, Open Road Media, 2010, Part II,[4]
- Another reason workshops become “workshoppy” is that often teachers slide unconsciously into overprizing the kind of narrative writing that teaches well, undervaluing and even dismissing work that does not.
References
[edit]- “overprize”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.