Overheat

//ˌoʊvɚˈhit// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A condition of being overheated.

    "Continued operation with an overheat could lead to other serious problems, perhaps even a fire."

Verb
  1. 1
    To heat excessively. transitive

    "'Made one quite thankful to get back to the fug, though as a rule I think the way these trains are overheated is something scandalous'."

  2. 2
    get excessively and undesirably hot wordnet
  3. 3
    To become excessively hot. intransitive
  4. 4
    make excessively or undesirably hot wordnet
  5. 5
    To grow too quickly in an uncontrolled way.

    "Dalio said that the Chinese economy was in danger of overheating, and somebody asked how a Chinese slowdown would affect the price of oil and other commodities."

Synonyms

All synonyms
chafecookfirefomentglowheat

Example

More examples

"The engine's starting to overheat."

Etymology

From Middle English overheten. Cognate with German überheizen, überhitzen (“to overheat”), Swedish överhetta (“to overheat”). By surface analysis, over- + heat.

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