overhasty

O1V4E1R1H4A1S1T1Y4

adjective

Too hasty.

“I realized that I had been overhasty in selecting a dance partner when my toes were trodden on yet again.”

Scrabble 18

Meanings

adjectiveoverhasty (not comparable)
  1. not comparableToo hasty.

    I realized that I had been overhasty in selecting a dance partner when my toes were trodden on yet again.

    5 more examples

    He denounces in the most impressive language that overhasty and most dangerous practice of resorting to manual or instrumental interference, before the os uteri and other soft parts are duly dilated.

    1836, Medico-Chirurgical Review, Richard & George S. Wood, page 64

    "Sir Julien de Montessy, he at length said, " I may have been overhasty in my judgment, suspend your's for awhile ; — there be no book in whatever tongue so hard to read as a woman's heart ! I have told you what I have seen and heard — yet hearing, I might have heard wrong, and seeing, I might have viewed with eyes prejudiced by my humour; so it were best deliberate ere so rash a step as you propose be taken. He is a right brave, open-hearted stripling, and by my faith, sir knight, t' would grieve me sorely that harm befell him, were I sure you had no ground for animosity.

    1840, Amelia Lane, The Fortress, Edward Bull, pages 137-138

    But, however, concerning philosophies of this kind, a caution was on no account to be overlooked ; because already we foresee it in mind, and augur, that if at any time, stirred by our admonitions, men (taking leave of the sophistical learning) shall, in earnest, shape themselves to experiment, then will it certainly happen, on account of the premature and overhasty speed of the mind, and its spring and flight to generalities and the principles of things, tliat there will be an imminent danger from such philosophies; and this evil it is fit even now to meet.

    1844, Francis Bacon, James Glassford, Novum Organum Scientiarum, Edinburgh Print Company, pages 50-51

    He entered into a discourse filled with phrases like "secondary consciousness" "collective hallucinations," "nerve-force," wherein, while admitting that great and good men believed in the phenomena of "spiritism," he concluded that they were overhasty in assigning causes. For his part, the realm of hallucination was boundless.

    1905, Hamlin Garland, The Tyranny of the Dark, Harper & Brothers, page 358

    We must not be overhasty in condemning those, who made an earnest plea for the educational rights of women.

    1910, Good Housekeeping Magazine 1910-09: Volume 51, Issue 3, Hearst Magazines, page 257

Synonyms & antonyms

adjectivedone with very great haste and without due deliberation

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*úp
  2. Proto-Indo-European*upér
  3. Proto-Germanic*uber
  4. Old Englishofer-
  5. Middle Englishover-
  6. Englishover-
  7. Englishhasty
  8. Englishoverhasty

From over- + hasty.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

overhasty. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overhasty

MLA

“overhasty.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overhasty. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “overhasty,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overhasty.

Source: overhasty on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.