English

Adjective

overweight ‎(comparative more overweight, superlative most overweight)

1. (of a person) heavier than what is generally considered healthy for a given body type and height.
2. (transport, law, of a vehicle) weighing more than what is allowed for safety or legal commerce
   • 1988, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Gearing Up for Safety: Motor Carrier Safety in a Competitive Environment, ISBN 1428922504, page 38,

     All States allow oversized vehicles if a special permit is obtained, although most States will grant overweight permits only for non-divisible loads.

   • 1993, Legacy in the Sand: Chemical Command in Operations Desert Shield & Desert Storm, ISBN 0788104756, page 74,

     He got as far as the first weigh station, where troopers found his truck to be overweight and threatened to pull him off the road.

   • 1998, Collision of Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District Train 102, ISBN 1428996532, page 48,

     Postaccident examination of the vehicle indicated, for example, that the driver had not adequately maintained his logbook and that his vehicle had been overweight for travel in Indiana.

3. (investment, finance, followed by a noun or prepositional phrase indicating a security or type of security) Having a portfolio relatively heavily invested in.

   Our portfolio is very overweight (in) Asian technology stocks.

Synonyms

• (of a person): clinically obese, fat, morbidly obese, obese, overnourished (often euphemistic), super obese
• See also Wikisaurus:obese

Translations

Noun

overweight ‎(uncountable)

1. (chiefly transport, law, healthcare) An excess of weight.
   • 1976, Acts of the Legislature of Louisiana, volume 1, page 445:

     […] and shall pay not only the amount of the permit fee for overlength, overheight, overwidth or overweight as might be due, but an additional civil penalty of fifty dollars for the first offense, one hundred dollars for the second offense and one hundred fifty dollars for each additional offense; […]

   • 2007, Josephine Martin, Charlotte Oakley, Managing child nutrition programs: leadership for excellence, page 462:

     SCHOOL MEAL ISSUES FOR CHILDREN AT RISK FOR OVERWEIGHT

2. (investment, finance) A security or class of securities in which one has a heavy concentration.

   Apple common stock is one of our overweights.

Translations

Verb

overweight ‎(third-person singular simple present overweights, present participle overweighting, simple past and past participle overweighted)

1. To place excessive weight or emphasis on; to overestimate the importance of. [from 17th c.]
   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.8:

     We also over-weight such vaine future conjectures, which infant-spirits give us.

   • 2009, January 11, “How Safe Is That Nest Egg, Anyhow?”, in New York Times:

     Kinnel explained it, the problem at Select High Income was that it overweighted mortgage bonds and underweighted other types of corporate debt, a strategy that backfired when the mortgage market collapsed.

Antonyms

• underweight