Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To contract to sell more of (a stock or commodity) than can be delivered.
- v. To be too eager or insistent in attempting to sell something to.
- v. To present with excessive or unwarranted enthusiasm; overpraise.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To sell at too high a price.
- To sell more than can he delivered or more than is in existence; to “sell short”: as, to oversell a stock.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To agree to sell more of something than one can supply.
- v. transitive To be too eager in attempting to sell something.
- v. transitive To praise something to excess.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To sell for a higher price than; to exceed in selling price.
- v. Brokers' Cant To sell beyond means of delivery.
Etymologies
- From over- + sell. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“HARVEY LEVIN, MANAGING EDITOR, TMZ. COM: So many times when I get wind of a video, or somebody here gets wind of one, a lot of times they - people kind of oversell, and it ` s not as much as what it ` s cracked it up to be.”
“LEVIN: Yes, I mean, I have to tell you, Brooke: so many times when I get wind of a video, or somebody here gets wind of one, a lot of times they - people kind of oversell, and it ` s not as much as what it ` s cracked it up to be.”
“I'd like the think that scientists who are well-trained and open-minded will be convinced by the data, so long as I don't, as one person put it, "oversell" the model.”
“The backpedaling makes me think that the Administration must have also lost confidence in finding WMD's and that the whole thing was a cynical oversell which is now being revised like a movie after a test audience.”
“- Unlike so many other genre conventions, Creation Entertainment has a strict company policy not to "oversell" our conventions.”
“- CONVENTION SEATING & THE CREATION ENTERTAINMENT DIFFERENCE: Unlike so many other genre conventions, Creation Entertainment has a strict company policy not to "oversell" our conventions.”
“We will not 'oversell' nor over-claim about our readership.”
“Alistair Darling warned Gordon Brown not to 'oversell' his G20 summit deal yesterday as he admitted it would not stop unemployment spiralling.”
“Perhaps in his next edition he can include the term "oversell," but it might not need explanation.”
“If you oversell yourself it may come back at you on the job.”
The Huffington Post: Karen Atkinson: Career Options for Creatives (Finding a Job)
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