Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Excessively strict.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Excessively strict or severe

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The stunning analysis comes from former Reagan-era Justice Department official Victoria Toensing, who explains on OpinionJournal. com: “I have extensive experience with the consequences of government bungling due to overstrict interpretations of FISA.”

    Think Progress » Specter’s Sham Legislation Touted By The Media As A White House ‘Concession’ 2006

  • But such as keep overstrict to the law, and (according to custom) omit not a conjunction, rhetoricians blame for using a dull, flat, tedious style, without any variety in it.

    Essays and Miscellanies 2004

  • He was so afraid of spoiling his daughters, of being overindulgent and having them grow up to be selfish, bad-mannered ladies that sometimes he felt he was overstrict.

    An Unacceptable Offer Balogh, Mary 1988

  • He attacks both the overstrict and the overloose methods of translation: the brake

    Early Theories of Translation Flora Ross Amos

  • In military affairs he was said to be overstrict in discipline; this from those who had served under him in former wars.

    A Virginia Scout Hugh Pendexter 1907

  • In the exercise of their power, they were sometimes over-lenient, but oftener overstrict, and docked the operatives on every opportunity.

    From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill: A Study of the Industrial Transition in North Carolina 1906

  • Van Twiller was a good-natured, corpulent, wine-bibbing Dutchman, loose of life, and not overstrict in principle, and with a slow, irresolute mind.

    II. The Dutch Town under the First Three Directors. 1626-1647. 1906

  • It is true that the perpetrators of this foul crime against humanity and Heaven have been driven by the indignation of outraged decency to seek a lurking place in the far-off wilderness of the Western territories; yet the foul odors from this festering sore are daily becoming more and more putrescent, and in spite of the distance, are contaminating the already not overstrict morals of the nation.

    Plain Facts for Old and Young John Harvey Kellogg 1897

  • The tables were turned on me, however, when Mikhei appeared and grinned, as broadly as his not overstrict sense of propriety permitted, at my unparalleled ignorance, while he gave me a lesson in the composition of _botvinya_.

    Russian Rambles Isabel Florence Hapgood 1889

  • He was overstrict for the times even in England, where his subjects almost learned, before he died, to regret the anarchy of his father's reign.

    The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06 (From Barbarossa to Dante) John [Editor] Rudd 1885

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