Meaning of over-egg the pudding | Babel Free

Definitions

To embellish too much; to exaggerate.

intransitive

Examples

“But hard riding men, in strange countries, are apt now and then to over-egg the pudding, as the Yorkshire landlord told his Grace of Cleveland.”

“The toast was drunk with tremendous applause, Mr. Jorrocks acting as fugleman—“but as we mustn't over-egg the pudding,” as the Yorkshire farmers say⟳, we will reserve⟳ the other proceedings of the evening for another chapter.”

“Our established Press⟳ bosses are no fools. They know⟳ the risks, and they will be careful not to over-egg the pudding.”

“[M]any British officials, as David Holden deduced from conversations with them in the Crescent bar in the mid-fifties, were 'afflicted with a familiar form⟳ of colonial myopia known as localitis' – […] Maybe Holden slightly overeggs the pudding.”

“If you really want⟳ to over-egg the pudding, you can, a month or so after the funeral, organize a memorial service.”

“Adverbs too ('she remarked, tersely') seem to over-egg the pudding or else acquire⟳ undue weight in the mouth of a supposedly artless narrator.”

CEFR level