hypervalue

English

Etymology

hyper- (“over, above, beyond, excessive”) +‎ value

Noun

hypervalue (countable and uncountable, plural hypervalues)

1. (countable) A value more important or beyond an ordinary value.
   • 2009, Arthur W. Frank, The Renewal of Generosity, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 86:

     Who gets how much of these is no longer organized according to the hypervalue that the physician's presence, in itself, can be healing.

   • 2016, Oscar Tranvag, Oddgeir Synnes, Wilfred McSherry, Arthur W. Frank, Ann Gallagher, Stories of Dignity Within Healthcare, M & K Update Limited, →ISBN, page 16:

     Hypervalues are those values that inform secondary, derivative values. Hypervalues are appealed to in defence of these secondary values, but they themselves have no further appeal.

2. (uncountable) An extreme amount of value.
   • 2009, Maria N. Todorova, Bones of Contention, Central European University Press, →ISBN, page 111:

     But it is not only this functional explanation that allows us to understand the hypervalue attached to archeology.

   • 2022 October 4, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Ben Dooley, “Businesses Brace for Currency Chaos in Asia, a Region With a History of Crisis”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     America’s currency is used extensively to buy and sell goods around the world, and its hypervalue is exacerbating the pain of surging prices for energy and other imports caused by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic.

Verb

hypervalue (third-person singular simple present hypervalues, present participle hypervaluing, simple past and past participle hypervalued)

1. To value extremely highly or closely.
   • 1991, Identity, Rationality, and the Post-colonial Subject, Columbia University, Institute of African Studies:

     To the missionaries other ways of reasoning were perceived as contending against their long established and hypervalued truth.

   • 2009, Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 4:

     For one thing, even in cultures like those of premodern South Asia that hypervalue orality—an attitude possible only given the presence of literacy, by the way—writing claims an authority the oral cannot.

2. To assign a higher value than is necessary or appropriate; to overvalue.
   • 2019, Working Across Difference, Macmillan Education UK, →ISBN, page 113:

     There are many examples where men's attempts to support women are hypervalued. Such disproportionate rewards for being a 'good man' can shore up patriarchal social structures instead of undermining or dismantling them.

   • 2020 September 21, Brentin Mock, “A Neighborhood's Race Affects Home Values More Now Than in 1980”, in Bloomberg‎^[2]:

     The study’s authors recommend new legislation that would "decouple neighborhood demographic characteristics from home values," and urge policymakers to consider reparations to compensate for "the systemic hypervaluing of White neighborhoods and devaluing of neighborhoods of color."

Derived terms

• hypervaluation