- excessive
- excessive, immoderate, inordinate, extravagant, exorbitant, extreme are comparable when meaning characterized by going beyond or above its proper, just, or right limit.Excessive implies an amount, quantity, or extent too great to be just, reasonable, or endurable{
the excessive heat of a midsummer afternoon
}{excessive lenity and indulgence are ultimately excessive rigor— John Knox
}{an excessive penchant for intellectual and verbal hairsplitting— Beach
}Immoderate is often used interchangeably with excessive{immoderate heat
}but, distinctively, it may imply lack of restraint especially in the feelings or their expression{immoderate zeal
}{immoderate laughter
}{Mass gave him extreme, I may even say immoderate, satisfaction. It was almost orgiastic— T. S. Eliot
}Inordinate implies an exceeding of the bounds or limits prescribed by authority or dictated by good judgment{the great difficulty of living content is the cherishing of inordinate and unreasonable expectations— T. E. Browny
}{I am always staggered ... by the inordinate snobbery of the English press— Huxley
}Extravagant often adds to excessive or immoderate the implications of a wild, lawless, prodigal, or foolish wandering from proper restraints and accustomed bounds{make extravagant claims for an invention
}{abandoned herself to all the violences of extravagant emotion— Stoker
}{went off in a second extravagant roar of laughter— Hudson
}The term often specifically implies prodigality in expenditure{she was rapacious of money, extravagant to excess— Fielding
}Exorbitant implies excessiveness marked by a departure from what is the customary or established amount or degree; it typically connotes extortion or excessive demands on the part of the agent or the infliction of hardships on the person affected{a resolution to contract none of the exorbitant desires by which others are enslaved— Spectator
}{the men who worked in the brickkilns lived in this settlement, and paid an exorbitant rent to the Judge— Deland
}{the law for the renegotiation of war contracts—which will prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices to the government— Roosevelt
}Extreme implies an excessiveness or extravagance that seems to reach the end of what is possible; it is often hyperbolic in actual use{the result gave him extreme satisfaction
}{the extreme oddness of existence is what reconciles me to it— L. P. Smith
}{the most extreme . . . statement of such an attitude would be: nothing is poetry which can be formulated in prose— Day Lewis
}{the fascination of crime is perpetual, especially in its extreme form as murder— A. C. Ward
}Analogous words: *superfluous, surplus, supernumerary, extra, spare: intense, vehement, fierce, exquisite, violent: redundant (see WORDY)Antonyms: deficientContrasted words: *meager, scanty, scant, skimpy, exiguous, sparse
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
