overinvest

verb

over·​in·​vest ˌō-vər-in-ˈvest 

overinvested; overinvesting

1

intransitive : to invest too much money

Competitive firms keep expanding until they eventually overinvest.

—Daniel Gressel

—often + in

… companies have overinvested in computers and communications networks.

—Robert J. Samuelson

2

transitive : to involve or engage (oneself) emotionally to an excessive degree

—usually used in as overinvested in

Because many parents are overinvested in their children, they believe they have the right to opine about their offspring's career management, and to criticize them for not behaving the way they want them to.

—Barbara Moses

… gets overinvested in volunteering at the church when she and her husband … hit a rough spot …

—Alyssa Rosenberg

overinvestment

ˌō-vər-in-ˈvest-mənt 

noun

plural overinvestments

Capitalist economies have a long history of overinvestment in hot new technologies.

—Hal R. Varian

… emotional overinvestment in a child's success.

—Hara Estroff Marano

Examples of overinvest in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The dot-com bubble, for example, led companies of all stripes to overinvest in technology, and the capital-spending bust that followed both contributed to the 2001 recession and made the early years of the subsequent recovery painfully slow. —Justin Lahart, WSJ, 30 Jan. 2021

Word History

First Known Use

1865, in the meaning defined at sense 1