Meaning & use
overgrade
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Meaning
verbtransitivetechnical
To give a piece of work a higher mark than it deserves.
Grammar: Takes an object: overgrade the essays, not overgrade to the essays.
Patterns
- overgrade something
- overgrade someone
The moderator found that one teacher tended to overgrade weaker essays.
Some students think the exam board will overgrade their project, but it checks carefully.
If we overgrade early drafts, learners will not know what to improve.
Word forms
| third person singular | overgrades |
|---|---|
| past tense | overgraded |
| past participle | overgraded |
| -ing form | overgrading |
Common combinations
- tend to overgrade
- New teachers sometimes tend to overgrade out of kindness.
- overgrade an essay
- It is easy to overgrade an essay that is neatly written.
- accused of overgrading
- The school was accused of overgrading coursework.
- overgrade by a mark
- She overgraded the paper by a whole mark.
Synonyms and how they differ
- overmark
- Overmark is a British near-twin and means the same, but overgrade suits systems that use letter grades as well as numbers.
- inflate
- Inflate is broader, and you can inflate grades as a policy, whereas overgrade is more about an individual piece of work.
- overrate
- Overrate means to judge something as better than it is in any area, so it is much more general than overgrade.
Opposites
Word family
- grade verb
- to give a mark to work
- overgrading noun
- the practice of giving marks that are too high
- undergrade verb
- to give a mark lower than deserved
- grade inflation noun
- a general rise in marks without better work
Commonly confused: overgrade or upgrade?
overgrade vs upgrade
Upgrade means to improve or raise something to a higher standard, not to mark work too generously.
Practice
The inspector warned that the department might ___ student coursework, giving marks higher than the work deserved.
Choose one answer.
Overgrade means to give marks that are too high, which matches the description. Undergrade is the opposite, and degrade means to lower the quality of something.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “overgrade”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.