Overload

//ˌəʊvəˈləʊd// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An excessive load.
  2. 2
    an excessive burden wordnet
  3. 3
    The damage done, or the outage caused, by such a load.
  4. 4
    an electrical load that exceeds the available electrical power wordnet
  5. 5
    An load of goods above the prescribed carrying weight of the vehicle.

    "We did haul overloads sometimes[.]"

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  1. 6
    An overloaded version of a function.

    "Code an overload of the insertion operator for the Rectangle class."

Verb
  1. 1
    To load excessively. transitive
  2. 2
    fill to excess so that function is impaired wordnet
  3. 3
    To provide too much power to a circuit. transitive
  4. 4
    place too much a load on wordnet
  5. 5
    To create different functions for the same name, to be used in different contexts. transitive
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  1. 6
    become overloaded wordnet
  2. 7
    To fail due to excessive load. intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
overburdenblow upadornbalebear hard uponburden

Example

More examples

"Major life changes, such as changes in income level or legal and financial issues, can also create mental and physical feelings of stress and anxiety, which can overload the ability to function well."

Etymology

From over- + load.

Related phrases

information overloadprogressive overloadsensory overload

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