overintensity

O1V4E1R1I1N1T1E1N1S1I1T1Y4

noun

The quality of being overintense.

Scrabble 19

Meanings

nounoverintensity (countable and uncountable, plural overintensities)

plural overintensities

  1. countableuncountableThe quality of being overintense.

    Both Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) and New Poems (1918), in whose Preface Lawrence described his style in both books as the Whitman type of free verse, were accused by the reviewers of unselectiveness, wordiness, unpoetic style, overintensity, and a strained manner.

    1960, Bernice Slote, James E. Miller Jr., Karl Shapiro, Start of the Sun, University of Nebraska Press, page 72
    2 more examples

    And, curiously enough, one of the earliest of them was brought about, not by overintensity of rivalry between competing fishermen, leading to acts of hostility, but by undue familiarity based on mistaken notions of friendship and resulting in abuses of a social and moral nature which called for interference.

    1910, United States Bureau of Fisheries, Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, Government Printing Office, page 98

    If Dos Passos' argument fails to be entirely convincing the reason is probably to be found in the overintensity with which he pleads his cause. There are too many disagreeable officers, the food smells too often like garbage, and hypocrites are too hypocrital for the book to be a fair portrayal of life.

    1923, John Trevena, Seamen's Journal, California State Library, page 19

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

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

MLA

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

Chicago

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

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