overweight

English

Etymology

over- +‎ weight

Pronunciation

• (adjective):
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌəʊvəˈweɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  • (US) enPR: ō'vər-wātʹ, IPA^(key): /ˌoʊvɚˈweɪt/
• (noun):
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊvəweɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  • (US) enPR: ōʹvər-wāt, IPA^(key): /ˈoʊvɚweɪt/
• Rhymes: -eɪt

Adjective

overweight (comparative more overweight, superlative most overweight)

1. (of a person) Having a higher weight, especially body fat, than what is generally considered healthy for a given body type and height.

   Before her diet, Jane was noticeably overweight, but she shed five kilos in the next two months.

2. (transport, law, of a vehicle) Weighing more than what is allowed for safety or legal commerce.
   • 1988, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Gearing Up for Safety: Motor Carrier Safety in a Competitive Environment, →ISBN, page 38:

     All States allow oversized vehicles if a special permit is obtained, although most States will grant overweight permits only for non-divisible loads.

   • 1993, Legacy in the Sand: Chemical Command in Operations Desert Shield & Desert Storm, →ISBN, page 74:

     He got as far as the first weigh station, where troopers found his truck to be overweight and threatened to pull him off the road.

   • 1993 October 13, National Transportation Safety Board, “1.17.1 Maintenance Records”, in Aircraft Accident Report: In-Flight Engine Separation, Japan Airlines, Inc., Flight 46E, Boeing 747-121, N473EV, Anchorage, Alaska, March 31, 1993‎, archived from the original on 17 June 2022, page 26:

     The records did not reveal any previous encounters with severe turbulence. The three major alterations/repairs involving the wing were either far outboard of the strut wing station, or were performed on the right wing. Two overweight landings had been recorded since the aircraft was put into service with Evergreen. In both cases, an inspection of the airplane was accomplished in accordance with the Boeing Maintenance Manual.

   • 1999 July 26, National Transportation Safety Board, “Operator Actions”, in Railroad Accident Report: Collision of Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District Train 102 With a Tractor-Trailer, Portage, Indiana, June 18, 1998‎, →ISBN, archived from the original on 17 June 2022, page 48:

     Postaccident examination of the vehicle indicated, for example, that the driver had not adequately maintained his logbook and that his vehicle had been overweight for travel in Indiana.

3. (investment, finance, followed by a noun or prepositional phrase indicating a security or type of security) Having a portfolio relatively heavily invested in.

   Our portfolio is very overweight (in) Asian technology stocks.

Synonyms

• (of a person): fat, morbidly obese, obese, overnourished (often euphemistic)
• See also Thesaurus:obese

Antonyms

• underweight

Translations

Noun

overweight (countable and uncountable, plural overweights)

1. (uncountable, chiefly transport, law) An excess of weight.
   • 1976, Acts of the Legislature, volume 1, Louisiana, page 445:

     […] and shall pay not only the amount of the permit fee for overlength, overheight, overwidth or overweight as might be due, but an additional civil penalty of fifty dollars for the first offense, one hundred dollars for the second offense and one hundred fifty dollars for each additional offense; […]

   • 1985, J.D. McDonald, Australian Birds: A Popular Guide to Bird Life, Sydney: Reed Books, page 66:

     It is clear that a bird would certainly be grounded by overweight if it retained eggs in the body and discharged them in large numbers at one time, like a turtle[.]

2. (uncountable, healthcare) The condition of being overweight.
   • 2007, Josephine Martin, Charlotte Oakley, Managing child nutrition programs: leadership for excellence, page 462:

     SCHOOL MEAL ISSUES FOR CHILDREN AT RISK FOR OVERWEIGHT

3. (countable) An overweight person.
   • 1951, Louis Israel Dublin, Mortality Among Insured Overweights in Recent Years‎, Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors of America, →OCLC, page 28:

     The study provides up-to-date facts on the variety of diseases, vascular, metabolic, hepatic, and other, which are responsible for the excess mortality of overweights.

   • 1998, Adrian Furnham, Melanie Dias, Alastair McClelland, “The role of body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast size in judgments of female attractiveness”, in Sex roles‎, volume 39, number 3, Springer, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 311–326:

     Singh found that the normal weight figures were judged more attractive than the underweights‚ who were more attractive than the overweights.

   • 2014, Ahmet Celik, Edibe Saricicek, Vahap Saricicek, Elif Sahin, Gokhan Ozdemir, Metin Kilinc, Ayten Oguz, Relation between the new anthropometric obesity parameters and inflammatory markers in healthy adult men‎, SCIRJ:

     Subjects were grouped as Group 1 and Group 2 according to VAI, and normals, overweights and obeses according to BMI.

4. (countable, investment, finance) A security or class of securities in which one has a heavy concentration.

   Apple common stock is one of our overweights.

Synonyms

• (of a person): adiposity, obesity

Antonyms

• underweight

Translations

Verb

overweight (third-person singular simple present overweights, present participle overweighting, simple past and past participle overweighted)

1. (transitive) To weigh down: to put too heavy a burden on.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and over-weight our feeble reason till it fell and we were drowned in the depths of our own vanity.

   • 1916, F Berkeley Smith, Babette: A Novel, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 240:

     By noon the fat, perspiring, and importantly busy merchant arrives, overweighted with red blood, fat, and responsibility, for a game of manille or dominoes with three or four old cronies.

   • 1962 March, “The New Year Freeze-up on British Railways”, in Modern Railways, page 158:

     Throughout the country there were: rupture of telecommunications, resulting amongst other things from telegraph wires and posts overweighted by snow or struck down by gales; [...].

2. (transitive) To place excessive weight or emphasis on; to overestimate the importance of.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes , book II, London: Val Simmes for Edward Blount , →OCLC:

     We also over-weight such vaine future conjectures, which infant-spirits give us.

   • 2009 January 11, Geraldine Fabrikant, “How Safe Is That Nest Egg, Anyhow?”, in New York Times‎:

     Kinnel explained it, the problem at Select High Income was that it overweighted mortgage bonds and underweighted other types of corporate debt, a strategy that backfired when the mortgage market collapsed.

Antonyms

• underweight

References

• “overweight”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.