overelaborate
Americanadjective
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
adjective
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of overelaborate
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:
But it takes a series of self-reflexive turns that are overelaborate in their conception and slightly inert in their execution, rendering the movie’s poignancy more theoretical than fully felt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
The overelaborate surfaces seem to evoke globalization as a simple excess.
From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2021
Are we still waiting around for Toni Morrison’s rather wordy and overelaborate sentences to let themselves be “more clearly interpreted?”
From Washington Post ● Sep. 27, 2020
His style is sometimes called Latinate or overelaborate, but in truth he tried to make it a vocal, speaking, natural style.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 3, 2015
It was made of granite for strength and massiveness, but like so many other things in Iofur’s palace, it was decorated with overelaborate swags and festoons of gilt that looked like tinsel on a mountainside.
From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman
The Portuguese design genius for mixing the pious with playfully overelaborated touches reaches its apotheosis at this Unesco World Heritage site—Portugal’s equivalent of France’s monumental Cathedral of Chartres.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 27, 2026
In some of the later work the collective effort shades over into an almost corporate look--not slick, exactly, but overelaborated, as though done partly on autopilot.
From Time Magazine Archive
But if they are overelaborated, the whole performance becomes automatic and dull.
From The Armed Forces Officer Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 by United States. Dept. of Defense
Without overelaborating Rodgers' harmonies or interfering with the tunes themselves, Kostal added a patina of Hollywood polish to the score that greatly enriches our listening experience.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 11, 2010
He did it quietly and thoroughly, neither shirking nor overelaborating the minutest detail.
From The Voice of the People by Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
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.
