overtime

over- +‎ time.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊ.və.taɪm/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊ.vɚˌtaɪm/

overtime (countable and uncountable, plural overtimes)

1. (uncountable) Working time outside of one's regular hours.

   Workers are usually paid extra for working overtime.

   • 1962 February, “Talking of Trains: Signalmen's rewards”, in Modern Railways, page 82:

     Nor is it good for the name of the railway industry that skilled men should have to put in so much overtime to keep up financially with the Joneses in other walks of life.

2. (uncountable) The rate of pay, usually higher, for work done outside of or in addition to regular hours.
3. (sports, countable, US) An extra period of play when a contest has a tie score at the end of regulation.

   Synonyms: (UK) extra time, OT

   That last-second shot ties the game 99-99 and sends it to overtime!

4. A period of time longer than scheduled.
   • 1943 January and February, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 17:

     Little need be said about the remainder of the run; the Dumfries-Annan and Annan-Carlisle times are very sharp with such loads, and the driver was just observing them, with nothing in hand, though overtime at stations made us late into Carlisle.

overtime (not comparable)

1. Exceeding regular working hours.
2. Beyond the normal or usual extent.
   • 1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 186:

     He worked his mighty money-spinner overtime.

overtime (third-person singular simple present overtimes, present participle overtiming, simple past and past participle overtimed)

1. (transitive) To measure something incorrectly, as taking more time than it actually did.
   • 1948, Decisions of the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California:

     With automatic timing, overtiming is virtually impossible. However, there are inherent inaccuracies in manual timing of telephone messages which, on the average, tend toward overtiming messages […]

overtime

1. Misspelling of over time.

• long-hours culture