overstretch
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English overstrecchen, corresponding to over- + stretch. Compare Dutch overstrekken (“to overstretch”), German überstrecken (“to overstretch”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]overstretch (third-person singular simple present overstretches, present participle overstretching, simple past and past participle overstretched)
- To stretch too far.
- 1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
- The idle triumphes, maskes, lasciuious showes
And prodigall gifts bestowed on Gaueston,
Haue drawne thy treasure drie, and made thee weake,
The murmuring commons ouerstretched hath.
- 1640, Charles I of England, Speech given to the Lords and Commons, at the Benquetting-House in White-Hall, 25 January, 1640, in The Works of King Charles the Martyr, London: Ric[hard] Chiswell, p. 169,[1]
- If some of [the Bishops] have overstretched their power, and incroached too much upon the Temporalty, if it be so, I shall not be unwilling these things should be redressed and reformed […]
- 1653, Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopœia Londinensis, or, The London Dispensatory[2], London: Peter Cole, page 50:
- […] outwardly in Oyls or Oyntments, it mightily helps such members as are out of joynt or overstretched.
- 1783, Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Dublin: Whitestone et al., Volume 1, Lecture 16, p. 380,[3]
- How far a Hyperbole, supposing it properly introduced, may be safely carried without overstretching it; what is the proper measure and boundary of this figure, cannot, as far as I know, be ascertained by any precise rule.
- To stretch over something.
Derived terms
[edit]- overstretched (adjective)
Translations
[edit]Translations
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Noun
[edit]overstretch (plural overstretches)
- The act of stretching something too far or beyond available resources.