Overmanufacture

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. The production of goods in quantities exceeding the current market demand ; manufacturing more items than can be sold or utilized ; creating surplus products beyond consumer needs
2. The act of generating an excess volume of products that surpasses consumption capacity ; making more goods than required for immediate sale or use ; producing an oversupply relative to market requirements
3. Excessive creation of merchandise beyond what the market calls for ; manufacturing a higher number of items than necessary for consumption ; generating more goods than the economy demands at a given time

Etymology: Overmanufacture is a transparent formation: the prefix "over-", meaning excessively, attached to "manufacture". The base word goes back to the sixteenth century, when "manufacture" was used for something made by hand, from Latin "manu factum", "made by hand". Its sense of large-scale industrial production came later, once machines entered the picture. Adding "over-" to a verb or noun in this way is a very productive pattern in English, and it is how many modern industrial terms were built. Because the prefix carries the sense of excess, the compound needs no special history of its own. Its meaning follows directly from its parts: to manufacture beyond what is needed or what the market will absorb. Economists and business writers use it mainly when discussing surplus goods, and the same pattern produces words like "overproduce" and "overpopulate".

Synonyms: overproduce, oversupply, mass produce

Antonyms: underproduce, undermanufacture, short produce