Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Too simple; not thoroughgoing.

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

  • adjective Excessively simple, especially so because of the exclusion of necessary complexity.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

over- +‎ simple

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Examples

  • 'Like any govt project' is a dangerous and oversimple phrase when speaking of history.

    Remembering Apollo 11 and the Legacy of Apollo - NASA Watch 2009

  • My point is that the joke is oversimple when viewed in light of evidence instead of cliché.

    So Who Knows? 2008

  • My point is that the joke is oversimple when viewed in light of evidence instead of cliché.

    So Who Knows? 2008

  • May be is it an oversimple way to think about it, but i feel strange about old people having to prove things in this century.

    Robbed yet again Glenda Larke 2009

  • In "J.stice Kennedy's J.risprudence," Frank J. Colucci manages to define it with admirable precision, debunking along the way the oversimple ways in which J.stice Kennedy has been characterized by people who disagree with his ­decisions.

    The Decider 2009

  • But you're right: spineless is limp and oversimple.

    Hackocracy? Steve Hulett 2007

  • It's a little oversimple, what I said, but it's like that.

    CNN Transcript Jun 8, 2001 2001

  • It is not my purpose to trace the situation historically, but the present [autumn 1945] is particularly unintelligible without at least a glance at previous events, and it would perhaps be convenient, and not too misleading, to divide its recent growth into three main stages — (a) 1900-1928; (b) 1928 - 1937; (c) 1937 to the present — artificial and oversimple though this can easily be shown to be.

    The Arts in Russia Under Stalin Berlin, Isaiah 2000

  • There is an absence, perhaps, of colour; it is natural that it should be so in the earlier poems of a writer who proposes aims such as these to himself; his poetry is addressed to the intellectual, and not to the animal emotions; and to persons. of animal taste, the flavour will no doubt be oversimple; but it is true poetry -- a true representation of true human feeling.

    Froude's Essays in Literature and History With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc James Anthony Froude 1856

  • Without being way oversimple here, but it appears that a very simple explanation is all you can grasp.

    News Tom's Hardware US 2009

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