overheightened

English

Etymology

From over- +‎ heightened.

Adjective

overheightened (comparative more overheightened, superlative most overheightened)

1. Overly heightened in intensity and/or concentration.
   • 1905, The Journal of Geography May-June 1905: Volume 4, Issue 5-6‎, Taylor & Francis Limited, page 225:

     A final exercise, and one which the children will greatly enjoy, is the making of a model based on the contour map. Cut in thin cardboard, of which no fewer than 25 sheets will be an inch high, the coutours of one prominent hill, mountain, or valley, cutting first along the contour lines on the map and after this placing the cut out piece on the cardboard and cutting out the latter along the edges of the pattern so obtained. Begin at the lowest contour, so that each following portion is smaller than the preceding and can be pasted on to the same in such a position as was the contour on the map. When you get to the top a perfect little mountain will be finished, from five to ten times overheightened, of course, but even so less distorted than a crude clay model would be. If you desire, you can fill out the spaces between the cardboard layers with some soft material, but this is not necessary. ‘The mountain, when seen from above, will offer an aspect so much like that of the contour map that even the most obstinate adversaries of those maps will have to look for other arguments against them than their being too difficult for non-scientists to understand.

   • 1955, Paddy Chayefsky, Television Plays‎, Simon and Schuster, page 361:

     They will dig into the words to find overheightened theatrical moments and effective camera shots. They will shoot scenes from underneath tables, through the crook of someone's elbow, or between the legs of a herd of cattle.

   • 1962, Howard Doughty, Francis Parkman‎, Macmillan, page 169:

     In so far as both concern style and manner, the question is one of that sober ground, against which, in the Baconian adage, lively colors show best; of a comparatively neutral, if expressive, medium of discourse, from which and back to which the writer can modulate for the elements of his subject that more deeply engage his imagination, but which in the meanwhile dispatches with a maximum of effectiveness the more ordinary historical business that authenticates for us these moments of intenser emphasis. One might illustrate with passages that show Parkman engaged in the more specialized forms of such business — evaluation of evidence, analysis of causes and conditions, mooting of controversial points, and so on — but in Pontiac his stylistic touch in this expository kind, though evident enough, is relatively less certain than in his later work, and its vigor is bought at a certain cost of overheightened or overelaborate rhetorical emphasis.

Verb

overheightened

1. simple past and past participle of overheighten