Meaning
Excessive to the point of absurdity; beyond the bounds of taste, moderation, or restraint, especially of performances, celebrations, decoration, or emotional display. The phrase now lives almost entirely in this figurative sense; the literal First World War meaning, climbing out of a trench to attack across open ground, is historical. In British English it is often shortened to OTT. Informal and usually disapproving, though sometimes approving of deliberate, self-aware excess; OTT is conversational. Regional use: General English; OTT chiefly British and informal.
Origin
First World War trench slang: going 'over the top' meant climbing the parapet, often over sandbags, to charge the enemy lines under machine-gun fire. Print evidence appears from 1916, when War Illustrated quoted men asking their captain 'when we were going over the top', and the Aberdeen Evening Express of 9 October 1916 recorded the trench synonym 'over the bags'. Arthur Guy Empey's bestselling 1917 memoir Over the Top, with its glossary 'Tommy's dictionary of the trenches', carried the phrase to civilian readers on both sides of the Atlantic. After the war the sense slid from reckless bravery to plain excess: Word Histories traces 'beyond what is usual' to a 1920 Leeds Mercury report on West End theatres 'going over the top' to sell chocolates after eight o'clock, while the Phrase Finder's earliest figurative citation is Lincoln Steffens in 1935 describing the 1929 collapse of the New Capitalism. The British abbreviation OTT is recorded from the early 1980s. A later Australian slang sense is sometimes mentioned but no source for it was verified.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- go OTT
- go over the bags (historical trench variant)
- go over the top
- OTT
Usage Examples
- Seven tiers, a fog machine, and a live string quartet: the wedding was generally agreed to be over the top.
- Shouting at the referee for ten minutes was over the top for a missed throw-in.
- The review called the film's final act entertaining but completely over the top.