Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cover with gilding: as, to overgild the carving of a piece of furniture.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To gild over; to varnish.

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

  • verb transitive To cover with gilding.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English overgilden, from Old English ofergyldan ("to encase, overlay, or adorn with gold"), from Proto-Germanic *uber (“over”) + *gulþijanan (“to deck with gold”), equivalent to over- +‎ gild.

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Examples

  • She knew that they were talking about that old trouble, and Nahum Beals's voice of high wrath made her shrink; but, after all, she was removed from it all that night into a little prospective paradise of her own, which, as is the case in childhood, seemed to overgild her own future and all the troubles of the world.

    The Portion of Labor Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman 1891

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