Overrate

Quick meaning: Overrate is a verb meaning To esteem too highly; to give greater praise than due.

Meaning

To esteem too highly; to give greater praise than due.

More Meanings

1. To overstate or overestimate in amount, extent, degree, etc.
2. An excessive estimate or rate.

Example Sentences

The vicissitudes of the weather may be responsible for more suffering among the lower animals than in the case of man, but we who live in England are perhaps inclined to overrate the amount of inconvenience occasioned to the world at large by this cause.

Vance and Martin note another problem with retrospective analysis of sexual patterns in a case in which a person has been diagnosed with AIDS or ARC. There may be a tendency for diagnosed people to overrate their sexual encounters in the belief that promiscuity is the cause of AIDS, thereby explaining or rationalizing their illness.

Word Forms

• overrates
• overrating
• overrated
• over-rate

Synonyms for overrate

Depending on context, synonyms include overflatter, overpraise, apple-polish, bootlick, brownnose, dickride.

Antonyms for overrate

Common opposites include understate, misunderestimate, underapproximate, underestimate, underguess, underjudge.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include overestimate, over-rate, overpraise, overvalue, overesteem, overevaluate.

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