overreliance

noun

over·​re·​li·​ance ˌō-vər-ri-ˈlī-ən(t)s 

: the act or state of relying on something or someone too much : excessive reliance

One of my top priorities next year is to have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our overreliance on fossil fuels.

—Barack Obama

I shy away from prescribing sleeping pills … to avoid overreliance on them.

—Andrew Weil

Examples of overreliance in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Ultimately, though not directly comparable to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, overreliance on China is its own bottleneck, Sinha warned. — Prashant Rao, semafor.com, 26 Oct. 2026

So Ukrainian defense companies and the military will likely keep backup systems and avoid overreliance on satellite signals whenever possible. — Jeremy Hsu, ArsTechnica, 23 Oct. 2026

Analysts blame the falloff on Converse’s inability to innovate and its overreliance on the Chuck Taylor model, Fortune’s Phil Wahba reports. — Jim Edwards, Fortune, 20 Oct. 2026

Many are already witnessing AI acceleration and overreliance leading to troubling organizational outcomes, including ​AI-agents going rogue, a deterioration of quality and concerns about skills erosion. — Elisa Mallis, Forbes.com, 20 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1833, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for overreliance

• geoscience
• neuroscience
• noncompliance
• pseudoscience
• appliance
• compliance
• defiance
• reliance
• science