Trying too hard to make up for something you feel bad about or trying to hide a weakness by acting in an exaggerated way.
From 'over' (excessive) + 'compensate' (to balance or make up for). The root 'compensate' comes from Latin 'compensatus,' meaning 'weighed together.' The modern sense of overcompensating emerged in psychology in the early 20th century to describe exaggerated responses to perceived inadequacy.
Psychologist Alfred Adler popularized the concept that people with inferiority complexes often overcompensate—like someone insecure about their height becoming aggressively confident, which actually signals the opposite of true confidence. It's a window into hidden anxieties!
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