Meaning of overegg | Babel Free

Definitions

Chiefly in over-egg the pudding: to spoil (something) by exaggerating it, or an aspect of it; to overdo.

idiomatic, regional, transitive

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.”

“[Seymour] Hersh vilifies the [Richard] Nixon–[Henry] Kissinger team for the way they adapted the handling of the Vietnam "peace" talks to the sordid claims of the presidential election time-table, but he over-eggs the omelette. It is reasonable to criticise them for having pretended to the American people (and perhaps themselves) that there was some way to negotiate a peace which would preserve the independence of south Vietnam. It is not reasonable to argue, as Hersh does, that the U.S. might have been able to bomb its way to such a durable peace in the spring of 1973, if the White House had not been hamstrung by the debilitating effects of the Watergate scandal.”

“[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.”

“[Hall] Caine over-eggs the omelette but it is still a strong story.”

“NML [Capital] insists Argentina is overegging the RUFO [rights upon future offers] worry: given that the country has appealed its case all the way up to the Supreme Court and been rebuffed, a judge is unlikely to deem any deal "voluntary".”

“The men [in Pascal Rambert's play Actrice (2015)] fare less well: The husbands of both sisters overegg their Russian accents, with Jakob Öhrman, as the boisterous Pavel, left to utter inanities including, "The truth is in my alcoholism."”

“Janis Joplin sounds unerringly like Ray Stevens' Bridget the Midget in places. While Raise Your Hand is a pretty undeniable Stax-on-helium workout, her version of the Bee Gees' To Love Somebody is overegged.”

CEFR level