(v. t.) To bear down or carry down, as by excess of weight, power, force, etc.; to overcome; to suppress.
(v. t.) To domineer over; to overcome by insolence.
(v. i.) To bear fruit or offspring to excess; to be too prolific.
Example Sentences:
(1) Her childhood - split between a boisterous outdoorsiness and an intense inner life - was dominated by her overbearing mother, with whom she fought "steadily but reluctantly" until her death.
(2) "[In the] last farm bill debate in 2008, Rep Earl Blumenauer heroically tried to force a vote on food aid reform, but was quashed by an overbearing rules committee, which wouldn't permit him to offer the amendment.
(3) The ditziness, the choice between the good man and the bad boy (Darcy and Cleaver), the overbearing parents all seemed infantilising.
(4) But the British institutions can still provide obstacles to overbearing Prime Ministers.
(5) It's about a child star and his overbearing parents and his agent and the studio, lawyers, therapists, everything.
(6) "Transplanting the Pirates Of The Caribbean aesthetic to the Wild Wild West proves disastrous in The Lone Ranger, an indigestible swill of forced humour and oversized, overbearing action sequences," he writes.
(7) "The state remains as bloated, overbearing and inefficient as ever.
(8) The heroic supposition appears to be that an overbearing state is somehow suppressing entrepreneurial spirit in areas such as the north-east, and that private enterprise will naturally burst forth once the public sector is cut down to size.
(9) The atmosphere inside the grounds has been good, even if Fifa's corporatism can be overbearing.
(10) Scotland would be a counterweight to London's huge, overbearing influence over the British economy.
(11) He never got on with his overbearing mother, Rosalind, but idealised his father Edward, who, as captain of the former passenger steamer Rawalpindi, had gone down with his ship and 263 men after the attack by the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst in November 1939.
(12) The alternative is that they'll be exactly like their online personas – overbearing and needy and desperate to react to everything with a tedious one-liner.
(13) Overbearing, ostentatious, and incongruous, don't you think?"
(14) To the authorities in Zug and Zurich, Rich was a victim of an overbearing US prosecutorial system - a system that had overreached itself in trying to have him extradited from Switzerland.
(15) Lyrically it is a bit overbearing, and there’s no mention of food or vodka, which is a bit strange.
(16) He wants recognition and respect from the international community, just as he wanted it (and probably did not get it) from his overbearing father and dysfunctional mafia family.
(17) Part of Manning's motivation, the defence has argued, was that he believed the US government to be overbearingly secretive, but again the prosecutors contend that is irrelevant to the question of his guilt or innocence.
(18) I found Mr Mitchell’s tone overbearing, but he did not swear at us.
(19) McKillop tried to defend his own tenure on the board, insisting Goodwin had not been overbearing and that the ABN deal was agreed by the entire board.
(20) In Out Of Place (1999), the memoir of his childhood and youth, Said described his father, who called himself William to emphasise his adopted American identity, as overbearing and uncommunicative.
Overhear
Definition:
(v. t.) To hear more of (anything) than was intended to be heard; to hear by accident or artifice.
(v. t.) To hear again.
Example Sentences:
(1) I remember his name being whispered by my uncles for fear I would overhear.
(2) Or the afternoon I was standing outside a hotel room awaiting a private audience with Martin Scorsese, only to overhear him complaining that he had done enough interviews for one day.
(3) One of her favourites is overhearing a colleague saying: "You can't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die."
(4) Women had complained of harassment ranging from being groped in the office and told to sit on their bosses’ laps if they wanted a Christmas bonus, to being forced to overhear male colleagues ranking new female recruits based on their sexual attractiveness.
(5) Overhearing my family say negative comments about other LGBT people made me censor myself in their presence, lest they discover that I was too.
(6) I overhear two parties from Essex reacquainting themselves, the afternoon after the early hours before.
(7) He describes overhearing Gates discussing ways to dilute his stake in the firm and says he burst into the room, shouting, "This is unbelievable!
(8) The top OIC and the overhearing battle captain informed me that they didn't need or want to know this information anymore.
(9) It's just like overhearing a friend at a party talking quietly to someone else, saying something completely different from what they had just spent an hour talking to you about.
(10) It was charged as burglary, but I remember overhearing a conversation between his dad and the solicitor standing outside: "Why is this not just shoplifting?
(11) Just as I once delighted in overhearing an American fashion journalist in Paris go nuclear down the phone at her poor assistant in New York for shipping over the wrong Balenciaga ankle boots, so I was pleased to eavesdrop on one particular English tabloid sports writer scream down his phone at his desk assistant in London to find a direct flight to Recife "or I'll go fucking ballistic".
(12) It’s a conversation that millions of Pratchett fans would ache to overhear.
(13) Overhearing Amir's comments, Parisa, 24, and her boyfriend, Mohammad, 25, erupt into an argument.
(14) Returning to uni after a three-month stint working shifts at a fish factory, I was shocked to walk through campus and overhear tales of leisurely trips to South America and South-East Asia.” Ramsden adds: “Apart from my small group of friends, who all spent the summer working to fund their university living, it seemed like everyone around me came from a background completely alien to me.” Tom Dixon, a sabbatical officer at the University of Leeds who receives a maintenance loan for his politics degree, says: “I’ve spent my entire life watching people who are less deserving being handed things on a plate just because of what they were born into.
(15) In Sense and Sensibility Elinor overhears Willoughby discussing the gift of a horse with her sister and saying, "Marianne, the horse is still yours."
(16) I feel uncomfortable being in the City or Canary Wharf,” he says, “and overhearing conversations in coffee shops and wine bars.” He finds “the certainty, the self-confidence, the reluctance to open up to alternative views” depressing.
(17) When you overhear them in the corridor discussing something they learned in your lesson, when you see their interests and talents bloom as a result of the input you have been able to give.
(18) She must be really good at giving the editor head Seeing yourself discussed online is like overhearing someone talking about you while you’re changing in the school locker room: you’re trapped, you have to stay and listen but you do it with this horrible, growing nausea.
(19) Don't worry," says a passer-by overhearing the conversation.
(20) "A Bunny's Tale" takes the form of a diary and moves from Steinem's initial decision to adopt the alias of Marie Catherine Ochs to her last day on the job when she overhears another Bunny say of a customer, "He's a real gentleman.