to overcompensate
22
6.7
- verb
- /ˌoʊvərˈkɒmpənˌseɪt/
:
sobrecompensar
- My commander first came on the job very nervous, and he overcompensated because of his anxiety.
He has to overcompensate for his lack of.
- He has to overcompensate for his lack of.
- So you're now trying to overcompensate by doing extra and doing more.
- And sometimes you can overcompensate to try to do away with those optics.
- Financial institutions and you know, to some degree their supervisors have overcompensated for the crisis.
- The other way is they try to overcome their nervousness by overcompensating.
- And again, they may lash out at other people, or they may try to overcompensate.
- But the, you know, the pendulums kind of swung the other way where they've been trying to almost overcompensate for that past at breakneck speed.
- I was so focused on not being poor and not having to suffer or have my kids suffer or want for anything that I overcompensated.
- And I will some of the things I'll do, I will overcompensate in my mind.
- I always set the tone, even when Dee Dee had to overcompensate.
- And when you're scared or nervous or not confident, a lot of people have DNA that makes them overcompensate.
Examples
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The only reason why you're trying to control me is because Dad left and now you wanna overcompensate because there's no father figure in the house.
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I spent the majority of my 20s overcompensating for the fact that I never had fun in high school.
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I think there are some people that like might overcompensate for certain things.
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Do you feel like because you a white boy... you got to overcompensate sometimes?
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So you're now trying to overcompensate by doing extra and doing more.
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So they start overcompensating in order to be as successful as they had always claimed.
Blog text (2) -
I know sometimes I tend to overcompensate for my emotionalism.
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I have a good friend with Asperger's who will overcompensate and hang back, away from people he doesn't know.
Blog text (19) -
I've learned that I am an incredibly confident woman and that I don't need to overcompensate for anything.
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After feeling insecure at work, she started to overcompensate by taking on too many extra projects.
Synonyms
229
3.8
Show more feeling or anger than a situation needs
58
3.6
Do something too much, more than needed
45
4.4
To do something more than is needed
3
6.8
To make a change that is too strong and causes a new problem
To try very hard to please or help someone more than needed
How Excessive
Surface Forms
Morphology
overcompensate = compensate (transparent) = over + compensate
The productive prefix 'over-' meaning 'excessively' attaches to the verb 'compensate' with a directly compositional meaning.
Etymology
Overcompensate combines over- meaning 'too much' and compensate meaning 'to make up for', as in compensation ('money to fix a loss'). So to overcompensate is to try to make up for a problem by doing 'too much', which explains why someone may react in an excessive way.