overcharge
Americanverb (used with object)
-
overcharges,
present (3rd person singular)
-
overcharged,
past participle, past
-
overcharging
present participle
-
to charge (a purchaser) too high a price.
When the manager realized we'd been overcharged, she gave us a credit for the difference.
-
to fill too full; overload.
-
to exaggerate.
to overcharge the importance of ancestry.
verb (used without object)
-
overcharges,
present (3rd person singular)
-
overcharged,
past participle, past
-
overcharging
present participle
noun
-
a charge in excess of a stated or just price.
-
an act of overcharging.
-
an excessive load.
verb
-
to charge too much
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(tr) to fill or load beyond capacity
-
literary another word for exaggerate
noun
-
an excessive price or charge
-
an excessive load
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
overchargesimple
-
overchargessimple
-
have overchargedperfect
-
has overchargedperfect
-
am overchargingprogressive
-
are overchargingprogressive
-
is overchargingprogressive
-
have been overchargingperfect progressive
-
has been overchargingperfect progressive
Past
-
overchargedsimple
-
had overchargedperfect
-
was overchargingprogressive
-
were overchargingprogressive
-
had been overchargingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of overcharge
Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325; see origin at over-, charge
Explanation
If a shopkeeper overcharges you, they ask you to pay too much for something. To overcharge isn't very honest, but it's not usually illegal either. Sometimes it's obvious that someone is trying to overcharge you: if the taxi driver announces that you owe her a hundred dollars after driving a route that usually costs about twenty, you can call that a blatant overcharge. In other cases, you may not realize until much later. It's not uncommon for salespeople to overcharge tourists, for example, making them pay too much money because they don't know any better.
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:
“It is reprehensible to overcharge and take advantage of wildfire victims who were in desperate need of housing as they fled their homes from raging fires last year,” Los Angeles County Dist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
Lawyers for the plaintiffs estimated that the lack of competition in the repair market allowed dealers to overcharge by $190 million to $387 million.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 19, 2026
The lack of transparency enables PBMs to overcharge patients and health plans.
From Salon ● May 31, 2025
Due to this capture, Google is able to overcharge text-ad clients and shroud its actual terms in secrecy in a way that it hasn’t with more visually oriented ads.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2024
One precaution has to be observed in such work, and that is not to subject the portable cells to too great an overcharge, due to the great excess of generator over battery capacity.
From Cyclopedia of Telephony and Telegraphy, Vol. 2 A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. by Samuel McMeen
And earlier this year, a jury found that Live Nation was an illegal monopoly, following years of criticism that the company stifles competition and overcharges fans, but analysts say a breakup is unlikely.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
“The companies pulled their punches, and one company was left being the sole bidder on the contract and that involved a lot of overcharges to the good people of Texas,” Slater said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 4, 2025
“It overcharges people for the right to defend themselves in court.”
From Salon ● May 23, 2025
It seeks compensation for overcharges, plus fees and other damages, and a trial by jury.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 13, 2024
Annette knew her for an artist in "extras," a vampire that had sucked her purse lean with deft overcharges, a creature without mercy or morals.
From Those Who Smiled And Eleven Other Stories by Perceval Gibbon
The base fee also protects the customer, in theory, from being overcharged.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 10, 2026
Diamond Ward, his public defender in the state case, said prosecutors overcharged Moreno-Gama, calling the incident a “property crime, at best.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
In 2020 the FCC fined T-Mobile $200 million after investigators determined its recently acquired Sprint subsidiary had overcharged Lifeline.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
Kim Kardashian’s fashion brand must pay $200,000 to settle allegations that it overcharged customers over a five-year period.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026
At the restaurant she insisted that the waitress had overcharged her for her milk shake, even though the price was right there on the menu.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
I believe this is a legitimate case of timeshare overcharging.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 27, 2026
“You had a lot of dealerships in the Covid era that were overcharging, to say the least,” said Eric Frehsée, president of the Tamaroff Group in the Detroit area.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
A spokesperson for the MLA said the number of complaints it had received about suspected overcharging had risen from 280 in 2023, to 350 in 2024 to 402 last year.
From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2026
The ride-hailing company Lyft accused San Francisco of overcharging it $100 million in taxes over the last five years in a lawsuit filed last week.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2024
The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against a defendant than can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguably exists—a practice known as overcharging.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
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.
