overexpressv.
/ˌəʊv(ə)rᵻkˈsprɛs/, /ˌəʊv(ə)rɛkˈsprɛs/, U.S. /ˈˌoʊvərɪkˈsprɛs/, /ˈˌoʊvərɛkˈsprɛs/ 1. transitive. To express (feelings, an opinion, etc.) to an excessive extent or in an exaggerated manner.
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1872 Littell's Living Age 20 Jan. 190/1 Men who over-express their feelings or express them unfortunately are very apt to be thought destitute of the feeling they have.
1883 ‘M. Twain’ Life on Mississippi xxxviii. 399 Terms which did not over-express the admiration with which the people viewed them [sc. Mississippi steamboats].
1961 Amer. Sociol. Rev. 26 32/1 (note) The ‘boss-lady’..wears a tailored suit to signify masculine authority. She over-expresses her authoritative status but, in the end, succumbs to her own ambivalence.
1973 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 79 599 Some touristic places overexpress their underlying structure and upset certain of their sensitive visitors thereby.
2. transitive. Genetics. To synthesize the product of (a gene) in abnormally large amounts; to produce abnormally large amounts of (a gene product).
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1979 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 76 3989/2 Unstable transformants that overexpressed the transferred marker have been reported previously.
1989 BioFactors 2 11/1 Certain tumor cells, especially squamous cell carcinomas, may greatly overexpress the EGF receptor.
1998 Jrnl. Clin. Investig. 101 1478 We used the highly efficient adenoviral delivery system to overexpress individual TIMPs from the cytomegalovirus immediate early promoter in rat aortic smooth muscle cells.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2004; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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