Meanings
plural overintensities
- 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 722 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 98If 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
overintensity. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overintensity
“overintensity.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overintensity. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “overintensity,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overintensity.
Source: overintensity on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.