Overcommend

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To speak in favor of someone or something with more enthusiasm or positive regard than is warranted or justified
2. To endorse or recommend with greater fervor or approbation than the subject actually merits
3. To extol or promote beyond what is reasonable, appropriate, or honest in assessment

Etymology: "Overcommend" is a plain English compound: the prefix "over-", meaning excessively or beyond what is appropriate, attached to "commend," which comes from Latin "commendare," meaning to entrust or to recommend. The prefix is the old and productive English one, found in words such as "overeat," "overpraise," and "overdo," so the compound follows a familiar pattern. The sense of the base word explains the whole thing. "Commend" once carried the idea of entrusting something to someone's care, and from there it came to mean recommending or speaking well of a person or thing. Adding "over-" simply pushes that praise past the point of reasonableness, so to overcommend something is to recommend or praise it more highly than it deserves.

Synonyms: overpraise

Antonyms: undercommend