English

Verb

overread ‎(third-person singular simple present overreads, present participle overreading, simple past and past participle overread)

1. (obsolete) To read over, or peruse. [10th-19th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.11:

     Over the dore thus written she did spye, / Bee bold: she oft and oft it over-red, / Yet could not find what sence it figured […].

2. (transitive) To interpret something to a greater degree, or in a more positive way, than appropriate; read too in-depth; overinterpret; overanalyze.
   • 2005, Hilde Heynen, ‎Gulsum Baydar, Negotiating Domesticity:

     To overread Plath's houses is to transform these biographical documents into spatial ones.

   • 2008, H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative:

     At the same time, we overread. That is, we find in narratives qualities, motives, moods, ideas, judgments, even events for which there is no direct evidence in the discourse.

   • 2009, January 20, “Heather Timmons And Jeremy Kahn”, in Past Graft Is Tainting New India:

     Did we just overread and overstate our place in the world?

3. To read too much or excessively.

Antonyms

• underread