overcompensate
/əʊvəˈkɒmpɛnseɪt
/verb [no object]
Take excessive measures in attempting to correct or make amends for an error, weakness, or problem: he was overcompensating for fears about the future...
- I think we designers are aware of this messiness, and overcompensate for it by attempting to obliterate every trace of it from our work.
- Often when a perfectionist fails to meet a goal - say, running six miles - she'll try to overcompensate by aiming even farther, so the next day she'll try for eight miles.
- There may have been feelings too painful to probe, feelings for which he overcompensated by an excess of not entirely convincing sardonic mockery.
Derivatives
overcompensatingly
- Man, these overcompensatingly macho, testosterone-fuelled, and totally Orwellian ‘operation’ names are getting to be too much.
overcompensation
/ noun ...- Her stridency on this particular point suggests overcompensation: the professionalism she so decried in her public writings was perhaps so troubling because she was so implicated in it herself.
- But there is an actuality of financial interest which justifies disqualification because of the potential for bias, the fear of bias, or, if you like, overcompensation the other way.
- The reasons behind this may well be the influence of their parents' overcompensation for their distance from the old country, in the way they try to reconstruct that culture for their children's upbringing.
overcompensatory
- While some plants from grassland or desert habitats undergo overcompensatory growth in response to defoliation, it is unlikely that perennial forest herbs can do so.