Overloaded

How to spell overloaded

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce overloaded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overloaded mean?

1. adjectiveCarrying or burdened with more than the safe or manageable amount.
2. verbPut too great a weight, demand, or quantity onto something in the past.

Overloaded in a sentence

• adjective

  The overloaded van struggled up the steep hill.

• verb

  The workers overloaded the lorry and burst a tyre.

• adjective

  An overloaded power socket can start a fire.

• verb

  A surge of traffic overloaded the company server this morning.

Where does overloaded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, built from two old Germanic pieces. The prefix 'over-' comes from Old English 'ofer', meaning 'above, beyond, or excessively', and it still carries that sense of going too far in dozens of modern words. The root 'load' descends from Old English 'lad', which originally meant 'a way, a course, or a carrying', and which is related to the verb 'lead'; over time it narrowed to mean the burden that is actually carried. The verb 'overload', meaning to put too great a weight or demand on something, is recorded from the late 1500s, and 'overloaded' is simply its past form pressed into service as an adjective. Because every part is plain English, the only real spelling care is keeping the doubled vowel in 'load' (oa) and the single 'd' before the regular '-ed' ending.

How the word is built

• over- (too much, beyond)
• load (a burden carried)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)