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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
oversimplify
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Elder's article greatly oversimplifies the causes of the current crisis.
▪ I know I'm oversimplifying, but these are the values on which I try to base my decisions.
▪ There's a tendency in news reports to oversimplify complex issues to make the news more entertaining.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Again the relationship between curriculum and culture is oversimplified.
▪ Although often oversimplified or oversold, some of the principles of the human potential movement bear on business organizations.
▪ An oversimplified but instructive point can be made by considering the fate of carbohydrates transported to the lunar base from Earth.
▪ It would be a grave error to oversimplify any of these outcomes.
▪ Oh how she oversimplifies her history.
▪ The interpretation of the complex world of human affairs in terms of an experimental analysis is no doubt often oversimplified.
▪ The picture of conservation presented here is somewhat oversimplified.
▪ Unfortunately, though this description tells part of the truth, it is greatly oversimplified.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
oversimplify

oversimplify \oversimplify\ v. t. to simplify excessively so as to distort or misrepresent; -- of facts, assertions, or communications; as, Don't oversimplify the rules.

Syn: make too simple.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
oversimplify

1908, from over- + simplify. Related: Oversimplified; oversimplifying.

Wiktionary
oversimplify

vb. To explain or present something in a way that excludes important information for the sake of brevity, or of making the explanation or presentation easy to understand.

WordNet
oversimplify
  1. v. simplify to an excessive degree; "Don't oversimplify the problem"

  2. make too simple; "Don't oversimplify the instructions"

  3. [also: oversimplified]

Usage examples of "oversimplify".

I spent January reading and rereading it, partly out of envy, because there it was, in cold print between hard covers, the same place, the same people, some of the same doctors, including a thinly disguised Bolshakov, in a nonfictional memoir that was distinctly Chekhovian, and, despite being deliberately oversimplified or nonarch in style, was greatly readable.

Although it was an article of faith in that house that it is necessary to go beyond the oversimplified race equation-the re formist view of the struggle as between colours, not classes-my mother and father succeeded only in making me a kaffir-boetie.

Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.

Kiel was oversimplifying by leagues, especially about the motivations of Lysos and her aides.

To oversimplify, a magnetically propelled car rides a carbon nanotube cable from planetside to an orbiting platform, which is anchored on the other end to a captured asteroid.

All those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.

But the generous inclusiveness of King's casts of characters, the attentiveness he lavishes on their predictable reactions, the canonization of their mundane observances, the oversimplified karmic particularity of their fates, his often overly patient charting of their irresolute and unremarkable courses.

This can be illustrated, though in a highly oversimplified fashion, if we think of an individual life as a great channel through which experience flows.

By inserting powdered egg in the factory, the company had oversimplified the task of the housewife, depriving her of the sense of creatively participating in the cake-baking process.

I've oversimplified the process, of course, but that's a nuts-and-bolts description.

That's about all there is to a periodic table, to oversimplify it.

The strolling and chatting theatregoers were represented by preposterously oversimplified wireframes, a display technology unused these eighty years or so, clearly intended to irritate Hackworth.