Oversum

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A whole that is more than the sum of its parts; superaddition.

    "The tradition consists in understanding a politically active unit as an oversum (that is, a super-additive entity): The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

Verb
  1. 1
    To add up incorrectly, arriving at a total that is too large.

    "In an account in the ledger, which has been ruled off as square, it is found that the credit side has been oversummed by £ 100."

Example

More examples

"The tradition consists in understanding a politically active unit as an oversum (that is, a super-additive entity): The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

Etymology

From over- + sum.

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