～すぎる
excessive action or quality
～すぎる means that an action or a quality goes past a reasonable limit. It attaches to the masu-stem of a verb (食べすぎる = eat too much) or to the stem of an adjective (高すぎる = too expensive).
It maps directly to English “too ~” and “~ too much”, and it almost always carries a negative judgment.
1. Doing too much of an action
With a verb, ～すぎる says the action was overdone. It is often combined with ～てしまう to add a feeling of regret.
昨日は食べすぎてしまった。
“I ended up eating too much yesterday.”
- 昨日（きのう）= yesterday
- は = topic marker
- 食べすぎてしまった（たべすぎてしまった）= ended up eating too much (食べすぎる plus ～てしまう for regret)
2. Too much of a quality
With an adjective, ～すぎる says the quality is at an excessive level.
この本は難しすぎる。
“This book is too difficult.”
- この = this
- 本（ほん）= book
- は = topic marker
- 難しすぎる（むずかしすぎる）= is too difficult
How to form it
Verb masu-stem + すぎる, or adjective stem (drop い / use the na-adjective base) + すぎる. The result conjugates as a regular る-verb (すぎた, すぎます).
- 食べる（たべる）= to eat → 食べすぎる（たべすぎる）= to eat too much
- 高い（たかい）= expensive → 高すぎる（たかすぎる）= too expensive
- 静か（しずか）= quiet → 静かすぎる（しずかすぎる）= too quiet
Key idea
～すぎる draws a line of “just right” and says you went over it, whether it is how much you did something or how strong a quality is.
Other N4 grammar
Updated .