overdress
verb, noun
overdress is a verb meaning “To wear too many clothes for a particular occasion” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled O-V-E-R-D-R-E-S-S and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 36 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does overdress mean?
verb
- 1
To wear too many clothes for a particular occasion.
- 2
To wear clothing which is too elaborate or formal for a particular occasion.
- 3
To put too many clothes on (a person).
parents who overdress their children in winter
- 4
To put too much dressing on (food).
Don't overdress the salad: it shouldn't be swimming in oil.
noun
- 1
Any dress (feminine-style garment) worn over another, especially over an underdress.
- 2
Any garment worn over another.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce overdress?
- US
Overdress has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-overdress.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of overdress
- overdresses present, singular, he/she/it
- overdressing participle, present
- overdressed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is overdress?
Overdress appears about once in every 36 million words in written English, the 184,844th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does overdress come from?
From over- + dress.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).