Idiomer
Browse Learn 🎓 Lessons 🎯 Quiz ⚡ Practice 📋 Lists ✍️ Blog ☆ Saved About

English · Slang Attested

overdrive

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Meaning · English

Freewheeling (driving a vehicle with the transmission in neutral) on downhill stretches to achieve higher fuel economy and/or speed than otherwise. In colloquial registers, ethnically bigoted variants have been common, such as Jewish overdrive (alluding to the stereotype of miserly Jews) or Mexican overdrive or Polish overdrive (alluding to stereotypes of foolishness and poverty).

Register: slang

Where it’s used: Used American English

Examples

Of course overdrive is forbidden for dump trucks in the quarry because it is unsafe, but unscrupulous workers were found to be using it because of a perverse incentive involving tonnage piece rates.

Usage example from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Adapted from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30 via kaikki.org).

Common questions

What does “overdrive” mean?

Freewheeling (driving a vehicle with the transmission in neutral) on downhill stretches to achieve higher fuel economy and/or speed than otherwise. In colloquial registers, ethnically bigoted variants have been common, such as Jewish overdrive (alluding to the stereotype of miserly Jews) or Mexican overdrive or Polish overdrive (alluding to stereotypes of foolishness and poverty).

Is “overdrive” formal or informal?

overdrive is generally slang.