Overbuild

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To perform excessive construction on a building or in an area. ambitransitive

    "c. 1962, Philip Larkin on John Betjeman How much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman's subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding' of rural Middlesex."

  2. 2
    To build over or on top of another structure. transitive

    "The architect wanted to overbuild the restaurant on top of an office."

  3. 3
    To build with excessive size or elaboration. transitive
  4. 4
    To construct more buildings than necessary in an area. intransitive

Example

More examples

"c. 1962, Philip Larkin on John Betjeman How much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman's subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding' of rural Middlesex."

Etymology

From over- + build.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.