overcompensation

1. 1.

   (psychiatry) an attempt to overcome a real or imagined defect or unwanted trait by overly exaggerating its opposite

   Broadercompensation

   psychiatry

2. 2.

   excessive compensation

   Broadercompensation

Other forms of overcompensation

plural

overcompensations·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about overcompensation

What does overcompensation mean?

overcompensation means "(psychiatry) an attempt to overcome a real or imagined defect or unwanted trait by overly exaggerating its opposite". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in overcompensation?

overcompensation has 7 syllables: o-ver-com-pen-sa-ti-on. The stress falls on "ti".

Is overcompensation a common word?

overcompensation is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.