over the top

• over-the-top

The adjectival form first appears c. 1935. See cite below. The adverbial form (in reference to World War I) first appears c. 1915.

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over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)

1. (idiomatic) Beyond normal, expected, or reasonable limits; outrageous.

   Synonyms: excessive, exaggerated, OTT, too much

   • 1938, Lincoln Steffens, Granville Hicks, Carl Sandburg, The Letters of Lincoln Steffens, Volume 2, page 1007:

     I had come to regard the New Capitalism as an experiment till, in 1929, the whole thing went over the top and slid down to an utter collapse.

   • 2015 February 23, “Oscars 2015: 10 things we learned”, in The Guardian (London)‎^[1]:

     You might have expected a pop star known for shows in which she has someone vomit paint on to the stage to come up with something similarly over the top for a live rendition of The Sound of Music. But Gaga chose to take the traditional route.

   • 2007 August 26, Bruce Jenkins, “The Chronicle Sports Columnist Blog”, in San Francisco Chronicle‎^[2]:

     Myers went over the top in the clubhouse, berating a reporter who questioned Myers' terminology.

2. (communication) Delivered across the Internet to a television or similar device.

over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)

1. Egregiously; beyond compare.
   • 2025 July 10, Jesus Mesa, “'We've Been Played': MAGA Faces Its Own Disappointment With Trump”, in Newsweek‎^[3]:

     On InfoWars, Alex Jones told his audience, "This is over the top sickening. Next they'll say Jeffrey Epstein never even existed. This is the swamp winning. No one is buying this."

• Over the top (unhyphenated) occurs only following a copula as the object of a sentence, as above, whereas over-the-top (hyphenated) is attributive, that is, it is used where the adjective occurs before the word it modifies, as in, "He gave an over-the-top performance".

over the top (comparative more over the top, superlative most over the top)

1. (not comparable, World War I) Over the parapet of a trench, especially at the start of a futile attack.

   The men were sent over the top to their certain death.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see over,‎ the,‎ top.

• "over the top" in the Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

• over-the-top media service on Wikipedia.Wikipedia