English

Verb

overwrite ‎(third-person singular simple present overwrites, present participle overwriting, simple past overwrote, past participle overwritten)

1. (transitive, computing) To destroy (older data) by recording new data over it.

   I accidentally saved my unwanted changes and overwrote the version of the document I wanted to keep.

2. (transitive) To cover in writing.
3. (intransitive or transitive) To write in an unnecessarily complicated or florid way; to produce purple prose.
   • 1954, Edwin H. Ford, Edwin Emery, Highlights in the History of the American Press: A Book of Readings, U of Minnesota Press (ISBN 9780816657698), page 367

     The Times of course has to pay the price of encyclopaedism by being often dreadfully overwritten, with long paragraphs connected by motley conjunctions.

   • 1986, David Novarr, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880-1970, Purdue University Press (ISBN 9781557531285), page 162

     He overwrites constantly, but his detailed and understated one-paragraph description of Monroe's apartment in New York (pp. 216- 18) injects high voltage into the de casibus tradition.

   • 1989, Michael O'Neill, The human mind's imaginings: conflict and achievement in Shelley's poetry, Oxford University Press, USA

     That said, the passage just looked at anticipates rather than participates in greatness. It is too adjectival, a stylistic flaw which suggests an insistence more apparent in the ensuing lines (182-91), where one is torn between thinking that Shelley is overwriting and that he is staying close to a feverish intensity.

Translations