overzealous

adjective

over·​zeal·​ous ˌō-vər-ˈze-ləs 

: too zealous : having or showing too much zeal : excessively eager, enthusiastic, or fervent

overzealous parents

overzealous workers

… another version of the overzealous monitoring that has produced kids who leave for college without ever having crossed the street by themselves.

—Peggy Orenstein

The village saw the orders as unwarranted interference from an overzealous state bureaucracy and promptly appealed.

—Joe Treen and S. Avery Brown

overzealously adverb

… has been frequently accused by its critics of acting recklessly, overzealously, and even, at times, illegally.

—Steve Lustgarden

overzealousness noun

Jewell was annoyed that press descriptions of him always emphasized his "overzealousness"; he considers himself a man of details.

—Marie Brenner

Examples of overzealous in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

OpenAI says an agent powered by its LLM models escaped its sandboxed testing environment to infiltrate Hugging Face’s servers as part of an overzealous attempt to obtain solutions to a benchmark test. — Kyle Orland, ArsTechnica, 22 July 2026

Although patients may have insurance, these overzealous laboratory tests and specialist referrals often leave patients holding the bag when their insurance companies refuse to cover. — Eric Khant, Sun Sentinel, 19 July 2026

Conversely, an overzealous slew of additions in early August could be foolish, given the Nationals’ slim postseason odds and inexperienced pitching staff. — Spencer Nusbaum, New York Times, 23 June 2026

Some associations would deny the requests over invalid online registrations, and some residents would accuse their community of overzealous rule enforcement. — Shari Wald Garrett, Miami Herald, 18 June 2026

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1628, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for overzealous

• bellis
• felis
• fellas
• jealous
• pelisse
• trellis
• zealous
• michaelis
• nucellus
• ocellus