overhead
overhead Lexical Profile
overhead Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Situated, operating, or passing above the level of the head or in the sky.
"Please store your carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment before takeoff."
Relating to the general, ongoing administrative and operating expenses of a business.
"The manufacturing plant implemented energy-saving measures to reduce its monthly overhead costs."
Executed with the arm, hand, or racket raised above the head (especially in sports).
"She won the set with a powerful overhead smash that her opponent could not return."
• adverb
Above the level of the head; in the sky or on a floor directly above.
"A flock of migrating geese flew noisily overhead as we walked through the meadow."
• noun
An ongoing general expense of operating a business, such as rent, utilities, insurance, and administrative salaries, that cannot be attributed to a specific product or service.
"By transitioning to remote work, the company significantly lowered its office overhead."
In computing, the extra processing time, memory, or bandwidth required by a system to manage and execute a task rather than perform the productive work itself.
"Encrypting every database query introduces a small amount of computational overhead."
In tennis and other racket sports, a hard stroke played with the racket swung above the head.
"He approached the net and put away the high lob with a decisive overhead."
An overhead projector, or a transparent sheet bearing images or text for display on such a projector.
"In the 1990s, the professor still used printed overheads to display circuit diagrams during lectures."
In nautical usage, the ceiling of an interior cabin or compartment aboard a ship.
"Pipes and electrical cables were neatly secured along the cabin's overhead."
Word Nuance & Usage
Notice the stress shift across parts of speech: as an adverb ('the plane flew overHEAD'), the primary stress falls on the second syllable, whereas as a noun or attributive adjective ('business OVERhead', 'OVERhead bin'), the stress falls on the first syllable. In British English, the business cost sense is typically used in the plural ('overheads'), while American English favors the singular or uncountable ('overhead').
• Rhymes for overhead
Word Origin & Etymology
Formed in Old English as the adverbial phrase 'ofer heafod' (literally 'over head'), which merged into a single compound word during the Middle English period. The financial sense referring to ongoing general business expenses emerged in the early 20th century.
Usage Trend
Historical frequency of usage in published text.