oversteer

Oversteer is the opposite of understeer. When you turn the wheel, the car seems to turn too much -- it's too sensitive. One way to think about it is as follows: say you're driving a car around a bend, and you draw the arc of the curve. If your front wheels are not tangential to the arc, and indeed they are angled more outwardly than the tangent, then you have oversteer. It means that if you turn a little bit, the car moves a great amount.

This is typically what happens when you skid or try to do donuts. If you go into the curve with too much speed (especially in front wheel drive vehicles), you tend to lose traction on the back wheels, while the front ones are still driving forward, so the back of the car fish-tails. The car is very sensitive or twitchy even to slight movements of the steering wheel.

Also called "loose". Oversteer basically happens when the rear wheels don't have enough traction for one reason or another.

Oversteer is not always bad. In racing circles, you often hear "oversteer is faster." Controlled oversteer can help move the rear of the car around obstacles (like cones in autocross), or help navigate very sharp corners.

In car setup, you can adjust towards oversteer by increasing the rigidity of the rear sway bar; this forces the rear wheels to do more work in cornering, making them more prone to losing traction.

While driving, oversteer often happens when braking in a corner. Braking causes weight transfer to the front wheels (think about it), meaning there is less force pushing the rear wheels against the pavement. They may have been happy before, but the sudden loss of weight makes the rear end step out and try to pass the front. This is why you should always, always brake in a straight line.