verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To justify excessively; to provide too much justification for. transitive
2. 2
   Specifically, to provide external incentive for an already-internally-motivated behavior, thereby risking the loss of the original motivation. transitive

Etymology

From over- + justify.

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