Overengineer

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To render something more complicated than necessary; often implying that the complexity was added intentionally. transitive

    "While PlayStation 3 surpasses both Wii and Xbox 360 in performance and graphics, the critics say it suffers from the same problem as many other Sony products: it is overengineered, scaring away average shoppers."

Example

More examples

"While PlayStation 3 surpasses both Wii and Xbox 360 in performance and graphics, the critics say it suffers from the same problem as many other Sony products: it is overengineered, scaring away average shoppers."

Etymology

From over- + engineer.

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