over the top
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.45 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Beyond normal, expected, or reasonable limits; outrageous.
adj
Downward onto plants in the field, as contrasted with other routes of administration.
adv
adv
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see over, the, top.
Example Sentences
- "I had come to regard the New Capitalism as an experiment till, in 1929, the whole thing went over the top and slid down to an utter collapse."
- "You might have expected a pop star known for shows in which she has someone vomit paint on to the stage to come up with something similarly over the top for a live rendition of The Sound of Music. But Gaga chose to take the traditional route."
- "Myers went over the top in the clubhouse, berating a reporter who questioned Myers' terminology."
- "The question was you don't have to hard cut the network over from proprietary to open. You can actually do it in stages and this device can lay over the top of existing proprietary networks."
- "Back to the BYOA strategy, that we'll continue to create, you know, a BYOA product that we sell over the top, is that there will be a lot of customers that will want to do business with us that way."
- "over-the-top dicamba for dicamba-tolerant crops"
Etymology
The adjectival form first appears c. 1935. See cite below. The adverbial form (in reference to World War I) first appears c. 1915.