noun
- excessive or misapplied cleverness; ingenuity taken to an extreme or counterproductive degree
Usage: rare; often used critically to describe solutions that are overly complex or unnecessarily elaborate
Examples
- The engineer's overingenuity resulted in a machine so complicated that no one could repair it.
- His overingenuity in designing the system made it harder to use, not easier.
- The proposal suffered from overingenuity—a simple solution would have worked better.
- She criticized the plan as an example of overingenuity masquerading as innovation.