overintense

English

Etymology

From over- +‎ intense.

Adjective

overintense (comparative more overintense, superlative most overintense)

1. Excessively intense.
   • 1856, Robert Brown, Science for All‎, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Company, page 379:

     It is as much a crack as the one which is made in the glasa when an overintense charge breaks through the side of a Leyden jar. The only difference in the two cases is that the crack remains in the glass, but is immediately effaced in the fluid and movable substance of the air.

   • 1952, Helen Marjorie Fowler, The Intruder‎, Morrow, page 77:

     He had delighted in Adrian, adored him, admired him; and somehow he had managed always to preserve a semblance of a not overintense interest and affection; he remembered having to force himself to leave the house, when all he wanted to do was to stay and delight in his son, and he remembered the gaiety and excitement of coming home to him at night.

   • 1954, Paul J. Moses, The Voice of Neurosis‎, Grune & Stratton, page 100:

     This made successful identification extremely hard for him. Well into his late teens his mother was the pivotal influence in his life. With the help of his fiancée his interests changed and he tried to free himself from the overintense family life.

   • 1957, Newton Arvin, Herman Melville‎, Viking Press, page 13:

     Such a love was not of course literally possible, and Pierre's overintense relations with his mother had only had the effect of frustrating him still further, and destroying his capacity for happy and normal relations with the opposite sex.

   • 1963, Ansel Adams, Natural-Light Photography‎, Morgan and Morgan, page 14:

     Everyone knows how often a photograph suggests a "lunar" quality: the dark skies, the empty shadows, and the overintense high values (see Fig. 11). Careless use of filters augments this effect. Except for intentional dramatic effects, it is usually desirable to reveal substance in both sunlit and shadowed areas of the subject, so that the illusion of enveloping light is preserved and the emotional progression of values is logical — no matter in what general level of tone the print is conceived.

Derived terms

• overintensely

Anagrams

• intervenose