overelaborate
Americanadjective
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
adjective
verb
Other Word Forms
- overelaborately adverb
- overelaborateness noun
- overelaboration noun
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.
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
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.
