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Overgrowth   /ˈoʊvərgroʊθ/   Listen
Overgrowth

noun
1.
Excessive size; usually caused by excessive secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland.  Synonyms: giantism, gigantism.
2.
A profusion of growth on or over something else.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Overgrowth" Quotes from Famous Books



... hydrophthalmus [Med.]; dropsy, tumefaction, intumescence, swelling, tumor, diastole, distension; puffing, puffiness; inflation; pandiculation^. dilatability, expansibility. germination, growth, upgrowth^; accretion &c 35; budding, gemmation^. overgrowth, overdistension^; hypertrophy, tympany^. bulb &c (convexity) 250; plumper; superiority of size. [expansion of the universe] big bang; Hubble constant. V. become larger &c (large) &c 192; expand, widen, enlarge, extend, grow, increase, incrassate^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the objection from monopolies and an overgrowth of power, which are made against private banks, can possibly hold against a ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... in the early times, and as they still do in country places. Village life here is preferred, just as country life is in England, and one thing that will amuse you, with your American ideas, and your pride in the overgrowth of our cities: the Altrurian papers solemnly announce from time to time that the population of such or such a capital has been reduced so many hundreds or thousands since the last census. That means that the villages in the neighborhood have been increased ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... really was truth—as at each fresh flight of her imagination she did not fail to remind herself—in all that which she said. Truth?—yes, just that misleading sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this precaution is to court eventual detection and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... mother died in 1820, the father a year after: for forty years they had been lovingly united. I have visited the retired "God's-acre," beyond the gates, removed from the noisy traffic of the town, and not without difficulty discovered the grave of father and mother. So dense was the overgrowth of years, that not a letter on the massive stone could be seen; but the old man of the place, tearing away the thick mantle of ivy, revealed the words, "Here rest in God Elizabeth Overbeck, and Christian ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... the scene of battle. Some gained the forest where the crystalline ray crisped the overgrowth into black ashes as it nipped at their singed heels. Those not fortunate enough to escape were but small nubs of blackened ashes on ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... reached the shoaly inlet under the flower-laden beech. They felt a coolness from the shady overgrowth penetrate their very bones. The decaying vegetation and the withered aquatic chestnut plants on the sand-bank enhanced, to a greater degree, the beauty of the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... associated with powers more mysterious and ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycense, or the relics yet standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian cities, forms of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature—yet in Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling aspirations. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... with a missionary and whom we impale on a bayonet. But I regard my lake as a politic community, under the protection of the law, and leave its denizens to devour each other, as Europeans, fishes, and other cold-blooded creatures wisely do, in order to check the overgrowth of population. To fatten one pike it takes a great many minnows. Naturally I support the vested rights of pike. I ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wharf, a glance showed him that some effort toward restoring it had been made. The overgrowth of vines had been cut away and the level of the top had been raised by several fragments ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... as the Major said. The lodge-keepers asked no questions, and they passed up the drive, through the silence of an overgrowth of laurels and rhododendrons. Then the park opened before their eyes. Nellie rolled on the short, crisp, worn grass, or chased the dragonflies; the spreading trees enchanted her, and, looking at the house—a grey stone building with steps, pillars, and ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got halfway round—a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by a path choked with overgrowth—I paused to give her breath. I sustained her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we reached a point from which ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... briars and wild-rose tangles had forced him to make a detour, and now, on drawing near the river again, he came upon so likely a spot that, practising the greatest caution, he dropped his big ugly fly through what was quite a hole in the overgrowth of verdure, beneath which the ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... parts being brought into the passages, and there will still be wanting the methods demanded for bringing up missing limbs or head, for which see paragraphs below. In most cases of monstrosity by excess of overgrowth it becomes necessary to cut off the supernumerary or overdeveloped parts, and the same general principles must be followed as laid down in "Embryotomy" ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... methods of slurring over differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various



Words linked to "Overgrowth" :   richness, hypertrophy, profuseness, profusion, cornucopia, hyperpituitarism



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