Overidentify

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To excessively incorporate the characteristics of another individual into oneself
2. to experience a strong emotional connection or merging of identity with someone else
3. to interpret or react to experiences primarily through the lens of another person's perspective

Etymology: "Overidentify" is a plain formation: the prefix "over-", meaning "too much" or "excessively," attached to "identify." The prefix descends from Old English "ofer," meaning "above" or "beyond," which shares ancestry with Latin "super" and Greek "hyper," all pointing back to an ancient root meaning "up" or "over." In English it has long been used freely to build verbs of excess, such as "overeat" or "overestimate," and "overidentify" follows that pattern exactly. "Identify" itself comes from Late Latin "identificare," built from "idem," meaning "the same," and "-ficare," from "facere," to make. So to identify something was originally to make it the same as something already known. Adding "over-" to this gives the sense of making too close an equation, so that one person or thing is treated as the same as another when it is not, or a person takes on another's feelings or traits too completely.

Synonyms: overassociate, overconnect, overrelate, overmerge, overlink

Antonyms: differentiate, disassociate, detach, separate, distinguish