Overdue means the date has come and gone and the thing still has not happened. A library book you should have taken back in March, an electricity bill sitting unpaid on the table, a baby two weeks past the due date.
It sits after the verb far more than in front of a noun: the payment is overdue, the rent is overdue, though an overdue invoice is fine. The second use is warmer — things that should have arrived long ago and are welcome when they do: an overdue apology, an overdue pay rise, a change that is long overdue. Long overdue is the phrase you will meet most, and it carries approval rather than blame. There is no verb; nothing overdues. And overdue is not due: due means the moment has arrived, overdue means it has already gone past.
1adjectiveoverdueNot paid, returned or done by the time it should have been.~29%
“Three of the library books were overdue.”
synonyms: late, outstanding
2adjectivelaterLater in arriving than expected.~28%
“The baby is already a week overdue.”
3adjectiveneededNeeded for a long time and late in coming.~43%
“An apology from him is long overdue.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
No borrowing here and no Latin. Overdue is built from two pieces of English you already own: over, meaning past or beyond, and due, the point at which something is owed. Past the point of owing. That is the whole word.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰeh₁bʰ-
Latin
dēbeō — to owe
Old French
deu — due
Middle English
dewe
English
due
English, today
overdue
Built from
From over- + due. due comes from Middle English dewe, dew, due, from Old French deu (“due”), past participle of devoir (“to owe”), from Latin dēbeō (“to owe”), from dē + habeō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA