Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of overact
That secret shakes Charlie’s love for his intended, messes with work, affects his performance in bed and prompts him to spiral out, overacting at every step.
—
Mark Kennedy,
Boston Herald,
2 Apr. 2026
Adrien Brody can’t stop overacting in a commercial for TurboTax.
—
Dee-Ann Durbin,
Fortune,
8 Feb. 2026
On-screen, the speech’s prestige can overwhelm its existential subject matter, and the passage tends to get overacted.
—
Shirley Li,
The Atlantic,
15 Dec. 2025
Snook and Lacy, who display such sharp instincts in their best work, seem to have been directed to overact; cameras freeze on their exaggeratedly bewildered or angry or devastated expressions, putting exclamation points at the end of too many scenes.
—
Judy Berman,
Time,
6 Nov. 2025
His presence is fresh, empathetic, often hypnotic, and never overacted.
—
Christian Blauvelt,
IndieWire,
24 Oct. 2025
One could easily be accused of overacting, of doing too much.
—
Bilge Ebiri,
Vulture,
20 Feb. 2025
The college student performers from the Hartt School aren’t encouraged to overact during the party scene anymore — no more drunk jokes or pratfalls.
—
Christopher Arnott,
Hartford Courant,
11 Dec. 2024
Mark Kennedy,
Boston Herald,
2 Apr. 2026
Adrien Brody can’t stop overacting in a commercial for TurboTax.
—
Dee-Ann Durbin,
Fortune,
8 Feb. 2026
On-screen, the speech’s prestige can overwhelm its existential subject matter, and the passage tends to get overacted.
—
Shirley Li,
The Atlantic,
15 Dec. 2025
Snook and Lacy, who display such sharp instincts in their best work, seem to have been directed to overact; cameras freeze on their exaggeratedly bewildered or angry or devastated expressions, putting exclamation points at the end of too many scenes.
—
Judy Berman,
Time,
6 Nov. 2025
His presence is fresh, empathetic, often hypnotic, and never overacted.
—
Christian Blauvelt,
IndieWire,
24 Oct. 2025
One could easily be accused of overacting, of doing too much.
—
Bilge Ebiri,
Vulture,
20 Feb. 2025
The college student performers from the Hartt School aren’t encouraged to overact during the party scene anymore — no more drunk jokes or pratfalls.
—
Christopher Arnott,
Hartford Courant,
11 Dec. 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for overact
Verb
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The scale of the exposure is easy to underplay.
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YouTube as the new film school, YouTube as the new film festival, YouTube as the new music-video breeding ground — is to dramatically underplay it.
Verb
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Campaigners, meanwhile, don’t want to overplay their hands.
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Try to keep him on the back line of defense and overplay the 3-point line to funnel to him.
Verb
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The Islamic Republic is expected to enact unprecedented security measures, overseen by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while the Basij paramilitary force will coordinate logistics, accommodation and crowd management across the various cities.
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Passed as the second of three Reconstruction amendments, the 14th Amendment was enacted after the Civil War.
Verb
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Lawmakers must resist the temptation to act out of fear to block the growth of AI and its still largely unknown benefits.
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But, again, is acting out of expediency and the desire to streamline a conclusive end the same as delivering a final season representing the best of The Bear?
Verb
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Here was a government that had explicitly borrowed from Beijing’s developmental playbook and sincerely attempted to imitate it, but failed.
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These are glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists that imitate a natural hormone in the gut.
Verb
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Today, Margaret would be playacting her own massacre in active shooter drills at school.
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Trixie advises Alma to playact highness to flummox E.B.
Verb
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The pilot will dramatize the trilogy’s opening heist at the Hotel Theresa on 125th, a thirteen-story tower with a striking white façade once known as the Waldorf of Harlem.
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Plot synopsis House of the Dragon attempts to condense and dramatize the conflicting accounts presented in Fire & Blood—stitched together from testimonies and court chronicles—into a single authoritative narrative.
Verb
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That skill mimics mortality, Lee said, with the Chinese firm calling it another step toward fully autonomous machines capable of working 24/7.
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Such a beautiful sculpture, mimicking the swirls found in nature (the cosmos, shells, Fibonacci-following topiary) felt a far cry from the swirl of emotions prompted by my favorite TV shows.
Cite this Entry
“Overact.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/overact. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
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