Overnourish

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To nourish excessively. transitive

    "We prate about our civilisation and humanity, but those of us who do not carry hypocrisy to the length of self-deception know that underneath our starched shirts there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts untouched. Occasionally he may be wanted, but we never need fear his dying out. On the other hand, it seems unwise to over-nourish him."

Example

More examples

"We prate about our civilisation and humanity, but those of us who do not carry hypocrisy to the length of self-deception know that underneath our starched shirts there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts untouched. Occasionally he may be wanted, but we never need fear his dying out. On the other hand, it seems unwise to over-nourish him."

Etymology

From over- + nourish.

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