overstrung

But given the widespread and extensive damage, the security system's command console should have been flashing like an overstrung Christmas tree.

[That's] the gist of it"; to listen to Biff asking Happy, "Are you content?', to Happy arguing that Biff's "just a little overstrung," and to Charley finally opining that "Nobody dast blame this man'--all of this is like watching a car run off the road momentarily onto the shoulder.

'Its soothing effect on overstrung nerves contributes very substantially to the maintenance of public morale and productive output,' he claimed.

To be sure there are those who will rave at it, setting up a fractious bleating about how organic farming must inevitably produce 'a new peasant underclass, which the eco-toffs and their nouveau-riche hangers-on would supervise from the balconies of their country houses', but this type of overstrung, hysterical heckler always lets himself down in the very first sentence of his argument, for the chief ingredient that gives fire to his opinions is always a gross personal dislike of certain classes of his fellow men.

The overstrung tenseness that is often associated with Ts'ao Chih's later creations is apparent here as well.

``The firm made good-class overstrung pianos with mahogany cases, and sold them from their showroom in Earl Street.