Oversowed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To plant seeds too thickly or beyond the optimal amount in soil
2. To scatter or deposit seeds in an area in excess of what is needed for proper growth
3. The act of spreading seeds overly abundantly or by too great a quantity on land

Etymology: "Oversowed" is the past tense and past participle of "oversow," meaning to scatter seed too thickly or beyond what the soil can sensibly bear. The verb is built from two plain English parts: "over-," which here carries the sense of excess or too much, and "sow," the ordinary word for scattering seed. "Sow" goes back to Old English "sāwan," so the compound is an old native formation rather than a borrowing from Latin or French. The verb's ancestor in Old English was "ofersāwan," which combined the prefix "ofer-" with "sāwan." Its root sense is a literal, agricultural one: a farmer who sows too heavily wastes seed and crowds the crop. The metaphorical use, of putting too much of something into a space, developed from that field-work image.

Synonyms: overseeded, replanted, interplanted, dropped, spread

Antonyms: removed, cleared, uprooted, eradicated, destroyed