overawe

See also: over-awe

English

WOTD – 21 April 2012

Alternative forms

• over-awe

Etymology

From over- +‎ awe.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əʊvəˈɹɔː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /oʊvɚˈɔ/
• Rhymes: -ɔː
• Hyphenation: over‧awe

Verb

overawe (third-person singular simple present overawes, present participle overawing, simple past and past participle overawed)

1. (transitive) To restrain, subdue, or control by awe; to cow. [from 16th c.]
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     None doe you like, but an effeminate Prince, Whom like a Schoole-boy you may ouer-awe.

   • 1849, Herman Melville, “ch. 57”, in Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, volume I:

     His free and easy carriage evinced, that though acknowledging my assumptions, he was no way overawed by them; treating me as familiarly, indeed, as if I were a mere mortal, one of the abject generation of mushrooms.

   • 2000, Alasdair Gray, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury, published 2002, page 61:

     He kept the biggest estates, and where he lacked troops to overawe the natives he evicted the natives and made a game reserve.

Antonyms

• underwhelm

Translations

to restrain, subdue, or control by awe; to cow

• Bulgarian: сплашвам (bg) (splašvam), всявам страх (vsjavam strah)
• Finnish: pelotella (fi)
• Russian: внушать (ru) (vnušatʹ) благоговейный (ru) (blagogovejnyj) страх (ru) m (strax)