overrate

present singular third person overrates · participle present overrating · participle past overrated · past overrated · alternative over-rate

1. To esteem too highly; to give greater praise than due.

   Synonyms: overflatter, overpraise, apple-polish, bootlick, bow and scrape, brown-nose, butter up, dickride

2. To overstate or overestimate in amount, extent, degree, etc.

   The vicissitudes of the weather may be responsible for more suffering among the lower animals than in the case of man, but we who live in England are perhaps inclined to overrate the amount of inconvenience occasioned to the world at large by this cause.

   1886 August, Briggs Carlill, “Are Animals Happy?”, in The Nineteenth Century

   1 more example

   Vance and Martin note another problem with retrospective analysis of sexual patterns in a case in which a person has been diagnosed with AIDS or ARC. There may be a tendency for diagnosed people to overrate their sexual encounters in the belief that promiscuity is the cause of AIDS, thereby explaining or rationalizing their illness.

   1985 February 9, Cindy Patton, “Heterosexual AIDS Panic: A Queer Paradigm”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 29, page 3

   Synonyms: overapproximate, overreckon, overapproximate, overestimate, overhold, overreckon, overstate, overthink · Antonyms: understate, misunderestimate, sell short, underapproximate, underestimate, underguess, underjudge, underrate

plural overrates · alternative over-rate

1. An excessive estimate or rate.