overstretch

present singular third person overstretches · participle present overstretching · participle past overstretched · past overstretched

1. To stretch too far.

   […] outwardly in Oyls or Oyntments, it mightily helps such members as are out of joynt or overstretched.

   1653, Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopœia Londinensis, or, The London Dispensatory, London: Peter Cole, page 50

   3 more examples

   The idle triumphes, maskes, lasciuious showes And prodigall gifts bestowed on Gaueston, Haue drawne thy treasure drie, and made thee weake, The murmuring commons ouerstretched hath.

   1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page)

   1640, Charles I of England, Speech given to the Lords and Commons, at the Benquetting-House in White-Hall, 25 January, 1640, in The Works of King Charles the Martyr, London: Ric[hard] Chiswell, p. 169, If some of [the Bishops] have overstretched their power, and incroached too much upon the Temporalty, if it be so, I shall not be unwilling these things should be redressed and reformed […]

   1783, Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Dublin: Whitestone et al., Volume 1, Lecture 16, p. 380, How far a Hyperbole, supposing it properly introduced, may be safely carried without overstretching it; what is the proper measure and boundary of this figure, cannot, as far as I know, be ascertained by any precise rule.

2. To stretch over something.

plural overstretches

1. The act of stretching something too far or beyond available resources.