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overwrought
in a sentence
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overwrought as in:  overwrought from lack of sleep

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  • She is overwrought from pressure and lack of sleep.
  • Two days after arriving in the latter community, he brazenly knocked on the door of Edward Weston, who was sufficiently charmed by the overwrought young man to humor him.†   (source)
  • Cynthia panicked, and they argued, overwrought.†   (source)
  • But when I peered more closely, I saw this girl was a stranger: some overwrought graduate student, no doubt.†   (source)
  • A palsy shook his hand or perhaps he was overwrought.†   (source)
  • My overwrought senses screeched to a halt.†   (source)
  • The problem was that with just under a month to go until the exams and every free moment devoted to revision, his mind seemed so saturated with information when he went to bed he found it very difficult to get to sleep at all; and when he did, his overwrought brain presented him most nights with stupid dreams about the exams.†   (source)
  • Inside their cedar tree they spoke of everything in the intense and overwrought manner of teenagers and he found that she had many moods.†   (source)
  • At age eleven, I was too young to glimpse a vision of what sort of overwrought wife and mother Mary Beth Baird would make; there in the vestibule, I wanted only to hit her—to forcibly take Owen's clothes and leave her in a puddle of tears.†   (source)
  • We have much to discuss, and you are obviously too overwrought to participate.†   (source)
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show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • I'd always found the Colonel's I-hate-the-rich routine a little overwrought until I saw him with his mom.†   (source)
  • His works, culminating in the overwrought and infamous, if not always successful, Lady Chatterley's Lover, opened the way for more sexual directness.†   (source)
  • Laughing at my own overwrought imagination, I moistened the paper in the basin water and worked the stamp gently free.†   (source)
  • Langdon found Bellamy's sense of drama to be somewhat overwrought.†   (source)
  • The closet door was swinging open, pushing the chair in front of it, and his son was crying 'Coooooooooo ...And then he realized it wasn't Tad's voice; it was his own tired, overwrought mind making Tad's voice from the thin scraping sound of the chair legs on the painted plank floor.†   (source)
  • Since the position is outside of Oria Province, his mother became overwrought and upset.†   (source)
  • She pulls a lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her pocket—evidently she had one all along, but was too overwrought to use it before.†   (source)
  • However, the defense reckoned without the defendant's religious counselor, the tireless Reverend Mr. Dameron, who appeared at the trial as the chief witness for the prosecution, and who, in the overwrought, rococo style of a tent-show revivalist, told the court he had often warned his former Sunday School pupil of God's impending wrath: "I says, there isn't anything in this world that is worth more than your soul, and you have acknowledged to me a number of times in our conversations that your faith is weak, that you have no faith in God.†   (source)
  • My parents were so overwrought that they gave up having any more children and devoted their lives to doing good work among the poor and hungry.†   (source)
  • Both parents, overwrought with too little money and too many children, fiercely swung the belt-or anything they could grab.†   (source)
  • To my surprise I found myself quite popular and very likely I'd have been cured of my overwrought sensibilities except for two things.†   (source)
  • Didn't Ivan the Terrible contain scenes so comically overwrought, amid the undeniable power of the montage, that you laughed and caught your breath more or less simultaneously?†   (source)
  • 'I can get killed flying them, too,' Dobbs answered pugnaciously in his rough, quavering, overwrought voice.†   (source)
  • 'You are overwrought, Sarah.†   (source)
  • He's upset and overwrought and it's not light yet.†   (source)
  • He's overwrought.†   (source)
  • It was almost Christmas and thousands of overwrought travelers jostled each other, hurrying toward flights they hoped would deliver them to their families in time.†   (source)
  • Inside were papers identifying this tragic suicide, this overwrought woman so burdened with grief she took her own life while seeking absolution in the eyes of God.†   (source)
  • I was already overwrought about my wife, I was still grieving for my mother, and then to hear such news ....I do not have words to express thesorrow, or the loss I felt.†   (source)
  • He clearly loved his daughter in particular and was overwrought at the thought of being kept away from her.†   (source)
  • Lady Lysa would give his lordship her breast whenever he grew overwrought.†   (source)
  • Nor can I let you chivvy me into hasty action concerning Gospodin Wright, not when we are tired and overwrought.†   (source)
  • Felicia remembers how when she was in grammar school the paraphernalia of faith had proved more intriguing than its overwrought lessons.†   (source)
  • I don't have time to figure out why I'm here or what he's playing at with the fake, overwrought cheeriness, because he doesn't even take a breath, and I wonder if the real Josh Bennett has been abducted by aliens, or maybe the elves carted him off after they got done with my hair.†   (source)
  • I don't happen to see any comparison whatsoever between the Lord and a rundown, overwrought little college girl that's been reading too many religious books and all like that!†   (source)
  • He knew you couldn't just call a taxi in Jeddah or Riyadh — or so said the guidebooks, all of which were overwrought when it came to elucidating the dangers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to foreign travelers.†   (source)
  • The world transformed into a gauzy overcast fog empire, and my eyes could no longer focus on the overwrought faces that attacked me from all sides.†   (source)
  • There was in his voice the slightly overwrought reverence sometimes used about supreme works of art, yet when I agreed, murmuring a thin "I'll say she is," Nathan could not even have been faintly aware of my forlorn and jealous passion.†   (source)
  • I now you're going to stay up to meet the plane, and I'm too overwrought to sleep.†   (source)
  • He nodded to De Santis, the harassed Lab Chief, who inquired in an overwrought voice: "One to one?"†   (source)
  • Pollard, surely overwrought from the reducing, lost control.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Wharton wears a confection of a dress—beaded and feathered and overwrought.†   (source)
  • The snare had left him weak and overwrought.†   (source)
  • He decided he had been nervous and overwrought that first time.†   (source)
  • Buddy Haas's impending arrival had him overwrought.†   (source)
  • Nelson described her as high-strung, overwrought.†   (source)
  • You're overwrought and sticking your nose in a place it shouldn't be.†   (source)
  • We had a merry enough time trimming the hat with silk flowers and bows, although several times I broke down in tears because I was overwrought.†   (source)
  • Like the rest of her ilk, Mrs. Moodie is prone to overwrought effusions, and to the concoction of convenient fairy tales; and for the purposes of truth, one might as well rely on the "eye-witness reports" of a goose.†   (source)
  • So what can this "great work" and its spirituality, sexual politics, code of machismo, and overwrought violence teach us?†   (source)
  • Perhaps her eye had become jaded, but Eve's initial scan of the room left her thinking,Overdone, overwrought, and overexpensive.†   (source)
  • Did your dedicated men tell you that' 'You were described as being overwrought — "raving" was the word that was used and making astonishing accusations relative to your wife, yes.'†   (source)
  • Hysterical, overwrought.†   (source)
  • Without question, he had explained to the overwrought guest that she had an option that would both serve her needs and her nerves and hit her errant husband in his financial solar plexus.†   (source)
  • Nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs, and occasionally, to satisfy my own simple lust, I would throw in a delicious, overwrought adjective or two.†   (source)
  • But they accepted my melancholy as some distorted mirror image of my overwrought flights of euphoria.†   (source)
  • Scarlett found that it relieved her overwrought nerves.†   (source)
  • His mother noticed how overwrought he was.†   (source)
  • Stella: You seem a little bit nervous or overwrought or something.†   (source)
  • I was overwrought but primed with hopes too.†   (source)
  • Overwrought nerves brought sharpness to her voice and her hands clenched at her sides.†   (source)
  • Scarlett, overwrought, could have screamed: "Oh, damn the Lady Harpists!"†   (source)
  • This despair of his not only unmasked the conceited lecturer and dismissed with its irony the matter at hand, the expectant attitude of the public, the somewhat presumptuous title under which the lecture was announced—no, the Steppenwolf's look pierced our whole epoch, its whole overwrought activity, the whole surge and strife, the whole vanity, the whole superficial play of a shallow, opinionated intellectuality.†   (source)
  • Stella could, and did, act as though it was no use answering the accusations of an overwrought woman.†   (source)
  • Grand, too, looked tired and overwrought; he kept pacing up and down the room, opening and closing a portfolio crammed with sheets of manuscript that lay on the table.†   (source)
  • I'm overwrought.†   (source)
  • It happened in that fashion that men call illusion, or the imaginings of people overwrought, or an intimation of the divine.†   (source)
  • His nerves overwrought by sleeplessness, the doctor fancied he could hear, on the edge of the silence, that faint eerie sibilance which had haunted his ears ever since the beginning of the epidemic.†   (source)
  • Ashley agrees with me, but it's just about broken his heart that his own sister should tell such a—" At the mention of Ashley's name, Scarlett's overwrought nerves gave way and she burst into tears.†   (source)
  • Thou'rt overwrought with passion; it disorders thy mind.†   (source)
  • She was only overwrought, as who would not be?†   (source)
  • You are overwrought and perhaps over-anxious.†   (source)
  • her nerves were overwrought, and she saw signs and mysteries in the most trivial coincidences.†   (source)
  • She is excited and a little overwrought].†   (source)
  • You are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.†   (source)
  • Mr Dorrit's overwrought heart bounded as he leaped up.†   (source)
  • When we were locked in each other's arms, my overwrought feelings could no longer be restrained.†   (source)
  • "You are ill and overwrought," he said; "believe me, you're exaggerating dreadfully.†   (source)
  • Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given.†   (source)
  • And at that moment, Mrs. Alden, in court with her husband and Emily, and overwrought, not only by the long strain of the trial but this particular evidence, uttering a whimpering yet clear cry and then falling forward in a faint.†   (source)
  • He seemed to have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his passionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some rash step; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment arrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it.†   (source)
  • He's overwrought, naturally.†   (source)
  • Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability.†   (source)
  • It was small wonder if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade.†   (source)
  • There was a connection now, or at least it would not have been difficult to establish one—a justifiable emotion could easily be assigned to his body's overwrought activity.†   (source)
  • Leonard looked white and overwrought.†   (source)
  • Jenny Hill, a pale, overwrought, pretty Salvation lass of 18, comes in through the yard gate, leading Peter Shirley, a half hardened, half worn-out elderly man, weak with hunger.†   (source)
  • I had come up on deck for a breath of fresh air and to try to get some repose for my overwrought nerves.†   (source)
  • So strange, that Marguerite, wearied, overwrought as she was, thought that the beneficial unconsciousness of the approach of death was playing her half-sleeping senses a weird and elusive trick.†   (source)
  • True, when you listened to the director talk you might sometimes think he had a temperature—there was something not quite right about the way he spoke, it sounded so brash and jovial and easygoing, but there was also something strange about it, something overwrought, especially when you considered those purplish cheeks and watery eyes, which looked as if he were still weeping for his wife.†   (source)
  • My poor darling's brain had told her the significance of the fact as quickly as her nerves received the pain of it, and the two so overwhelmed her that her overwrought nature had its voice in that dreadful scream.†   (source)
  • And Clyde, in his own overwrought condition, hearing her cry and seeing her fall, jumping up—the restraining hand of Jephson instantly upon him, while bailiffs and others assisted her and Titus who was beside her from the courtroom.†   (source)
  • Overwrought nature had at last peremptorily asserted herself, and she lay there in a dead swoon: her eyes circled by deep purple lines, that told of long, sleepless nights, her hair matted and damp round her forehead, her lips parted in a sharp curve that spoke of physical pain.†   (source)
  • Her still overwrought nerves, her excitement and agitation, lent beautiful Marguerite Blakeney much additional charm: escorted by a veritable bevy of men of all ages and of most nationalities, she called forth many exclamations of admiration from everyone as she passed.†   (source)
  • He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought report of the King's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad, they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to dine in public after a day or two—his wholesome complexion and vigorous step, assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse—in case any evil rumours HAD gone about—than any other scheme that could be devised.†   (source)
  • But all this, if you'll excuse my saying so, is a matter of nerves, in my opinion ...your overwrought nerves, that's what it is.†   (source)
  • She has been overwrought lately.†   (source)
  • But to Philip's mind, filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident, this sudden eagerness in Stephen, and the change in Maggie's face, which was plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast with the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be charged with painful meaning.†   (source)
  • The thought, too, came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night—four days before....And all this came into my mind during the minutes I was lying on my face on the sofa.†   (source)
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overwrought as in:  overwrought special effects

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  • While the cake was delicious, the decoration was a bit overwrought, with too many colors and shapes competing for attention.
  • The awesome power of the new genetic technology, which he had formerly considered to he just so many words in an overwrought sales pitch—the power suddenly became clear to him.   (source)
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