overstimulate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to stimulate (something) to an excessive or harmful degree.
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Physiology. to cause (someone) to experience sensory overload.
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Physiology. to cause (a gland, nerve, or other organ) to become overactive and produce an abnormal increase in its usual activity.
verb (used without object)
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Overstimulate means to overwhelm someone, or make something overactive. Feeling angry, frustrated, or upset in a noisy or brightly lit space might suggest that you're easy to overstimulate. Caffeine might overstimulate your brain and make it difficult to sleep, or loud music which is fun at first might eventually make you feel overwhelmed, or overstimulated. Stimulate means "to provide stimulus or input." Overstimulate means "to provide an overwhelming amount of input."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The pulsating music, giant inflatables tossed into the crowd and sudden blasts of fog can overstimulate kids.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2025
The smells, lights, textures, and crowds in the ER can overstimulate a person with autism, she said.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 11, 2024
Alicia also says day-to-day activities, like grocery shopping, medical appointments and haircuts, have been abandoned, as she prioritises preventing situations that could overstimulate her son.
From BBC ● Jan. 3, 2024
Making a room hypertransparent for people who are deaf may overstimulate people who are autistic.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 20, 2023
The entire body is unduly sensitized, and the boy is besieged by an army of new and vivid sense impressions that overstimulate, confuse, and baffle him.
From The Minister and the Boy A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work by Hoben, Allan
I’m sure the scientific explanation involves ecstatic brain hormones, leading to an overstimulated smile reflex.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
"If he gets upset, oversensitive, or overstimulated, he could walk off with half a haircut, which then looks terrible," Al says.
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2026
But if they are overstimulated, they will have the opposite effect, creating stomach cramping, vomiting, nausea, irritability, and panic when exposed to even a small amount.
From Slate ● Jun. 13, 2026
"It's where the prefrontal cortex is overloaded, overstimulated, and you make all kinds of dangerous mistakes when you're multitasking behind the wheel," he said.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 29, 2024
I even find myself telling her about how humanity is off course, how we’re overconnected, overstimulated, undernourished.
From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
