verb
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to build over or on top of
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to erect too many buildings in (an area)
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to build too large or elaborately
Etymology
Origin of overbuild
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:
As with other industries overcome by artificial-intelligence euphoria, the main question is whether these companies might overbuild.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
While it is true that memory prices are surging and major manufacturers haven’t significantly increased production or capital expenditures, history shows commodity chip suppliers always overbuild capacity at some point in the semiconductor cycle.
From Barron's ● Jan. 7, 2026
“It would be hard to overbuild downtown given those factors.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2022
When you are in this quarterly apparel fashion business, you overbuild and you are discounting.
From The Verge ● Jul. 4, 2022
In response, a large body of exercise science shows, our bodies initiate a variety of cellular mechanisms that fix the tears and strains and, in most cases, overbuild the affected parts.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 7, 2022
The first was "whether there has been an overbuilding in technology and AI".
From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2026
Home builders have been struggling with affordability issues, some of their own making, and an oversupply problem following a period of overbuilding just as mortgage rates started rising.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 18, 2026
They see Vanke’s troubles as an inevitable part of the slow and painful fallout from Beijing’s efforts to shrink the real estate sector and deal with years of debt-fueled overbuilding.
From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025
He and Maher’s teams had lengthy conversations early on in the process to prevent overbuilding the prosthetics, Gower said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2025
And these technological therapies would have to be constructed, she said, so that they don’t invite their own side effects, like, say, overbuilding one neural network.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
If Meta does rent out excess compute, it could signal that big tech has overbuilt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
But the city became overbuilt and the housing boom went bust in the mid-1960s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2025
Only an overbuilt city can offer tenants security and freedom.
From Slate ● Sep. 10, 2024
By the end, the playing space, like the once pristine frontier, is so overbuilt you can see little else.
From New York Times ● Jun. 18, 2024
That suggested that Berkeley’s thirty-seven-inch machine was already overbuilt.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
