as in exaggerating
to describe or express in too strong terms
it appears you've somewhat overstated your computer skills, if you can't find the "on" button!
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Recent Examples of overstating
That might be overstating things a bit (especially for a few coaches, ahem, Jim Harbaugh).
—
Austin Mock, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2026
The Tribune claimed that the city was overstating the success of the Blue Bag program by determining the recycling rate only when considering garbage sorted at MRRFs when, in fact, a lot of recyclables were going to waste transfer stations where they were hauled to landfills.
—Adam Harrington, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week that federal data may be overstating the number of new jobs added by as many as 60,000 per month.
—Sarah Fortinsky, The Hill, 16 Dec. 2025
Powell made the striking admission the Fed believes the official payroll figures—which have slowed sharply since the summer—are overstating job growth by roughly 60,000 per month.
—Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 10 Dec. 2025
To Burry's charge that customers are overstating the useful lives of Nvidia's graphics processing units in order to justify runaway capital expenditures, Nvidia counters that its customers depreciate GPUs over four to six years based on real-world longevity and utilization patterns.
—Yun Li, CNBC, 25 Nov. 2025
Russia's gains are slow and incremental, won at a heavy cost against Kyiv’s overstretched army, according to these mostly Western observers, who see Moscow as overstating its position for diplomatic gain in negotiations with Washington.
—Alexander Smith, NBC news, 24 Nov. 2025
Anthropic also noted an interesting limitation is how Claude Code would hallucinate inaccurate information to the Chinese hackers, including overstating findings or fabricating data.
—PC Magazine, 13 Nov. 2025
These days companies are touting, and often overstating, their AI bona fides.
—Allison Morrow, CNN Money, 28 Oct. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for overstating
exaggerating
Verb
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Studies have found that companies tend to buy cheap, low-quality carbon credits, which run a risk of exaggerating their carbon reduction claims or providing results that would have happened anyway, leaving no real climate benefit.—
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Democratic officials have pushed back, arguing that the president is exaggerating the need to combat crime in the city for political gain.—
Cite this Entry
“Overstating.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/overstating. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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