Overheating

How to spell overheating

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce overheating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overheating mean?

1. verbBecoming or making something excessively hot, often to the point of damage or malfunction.

Overheating in a sentence

• The laptop keeps overheating whenever the video editing software is running.

• The old engine started overheating during the steep mountain climb.

Where does overheating come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound built from two very old Anglo-Saxon parts. The prefix over- comes from the Old English ofer, meaning 'above' or 'beyond', and here it carries the sense of doing something to excess. The core is heat, from the Old English hǣtu, the noun for warmth, which is closely tied to hāt, meaning 'hot'. The verb 'to overheat', meaning to make or become too hot, was formed by joining these elements, and -ing is the ordinary suffix that turns a verb into its present participle or into a noun naming the action. Because every piece is plain Germanic English, the spelling is transparent: there are no silent letters or foreign quirks, just over plus heat plus ing.

How the word is built

• over- (excessively, beyond)
• heat (root, warmth)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)