overact
verb (used with or without object)
to act in an exaggerated manner.
overaction
-
a word derived from
overact.
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.
Said the New York Herald Tribune's Sports Editor Stanley Woodward: "Knowing he was under fire for timidity, Chandler took refuge in overaction . . . .the most colossal piece of injustice and bravado yet perpetrated."
From Time Magazine Archive
If the overaction or excess of secretion begins in childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Louis Berman M.D.
Many persons refer the cause to our climate; others to the overaction of the brain and nerves in childhood and youth by our schools, and by the exhaustive excitements of social and fashionable life.
From The Youth's Companion Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 by Various
The pineal glands of a number of young bullocks were obtained and used for feeding, to see whether an overaction of the internal secretion could be produced.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Louis Berman M.D.
His effort to seem at ease led him into overaction.
From Finger Posts on the Way of Life by T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
