over the top (abbrev. O.T.T.)
adjective - informal

- too extreme and not suitable, or demanding too much attention or effort, especially in an uncontrolled way

Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

Many films of World War I battles show soldiers leaving the safety of their trenches in order to attack the enemy. This manoeuvre was referred to as “going over the top” and literally meant climbing out of a trench or hole and charging across so-called no-man’s land, a strip of ground that was sometimes as narrow as 30 metres and as wide as a few kilometres.

Because “going over the top” was considered such an extreme operation, it evolved into a figurative term to describe behaviour that goes too far, and beyond the acceptable limits of reason.

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TALKING POINT

With no man’s land sometimes spanning just 100 feet, enemy troops were so close that they could hear each other and even smell their cooking. The commander of the British Second Corps, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, believed this proximity posed “the greatest danger” to the morale of soldiers and told Divisional Commanders to explicitly prohibit any “friendly intercourse with the enemy.”

In a memo issued on Dec. 5, he warned that: “troops in trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted to do so, into a ‘live and let live’ theory of life.”

During the Christmas truce of 1914, roughly 100,000 British and German troops were involved in the informal cessations of hostility along the Western Front. The Germans placed candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols.

Commanding officers on both sides were shocked when soldiers went over the top into no-man’s land to exchange food, cigarettes, and even play games of football. For some days thereafter, both sides fired over the heads of their enemies, before military order was restored and the killing continued.

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SYNONYMS

excessive, extreme, exorbitant, out of bounds, over the line, out of line, beyond the pale

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SYNONYMS

excessive, extravagant, extreme, disproportionate, exaggerated, exorbitant, OTT, over the limit, over the line, beyond the pale, too much, uncalled for, unwarranted, a bit much, going too far, outrageous, unconscionable, preposterous, melodramatic, overstated, histrionic, larger-than-life, attention-grabbing, out of all proportion

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“I find some people’s Christmas decorations to be a bit OVER THE TOP.”

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Paul Smith