• Overween

    Origin

    From Middle English overwēnen ("To be presumptuous, be over-confident; presume"), from Old English oferwennan ("ang") and Old English oferwenian ("to be proud, become insolent, or presumptuous").

    Full definition of overween

    Verb

    1. (ergative) To think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself).
      • unknown date, Milton, Sonnet IX:and they that overween,
        And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
      • 2005, A. J. Liebling, published in Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer, page 327:The clouds on Futurity Day bore out in a general way this prognostication. But he overweened himself.
    2. To make or render arrogant and overweening.
      • 1987 October, in Field & Stream, volume 92, number 6, page 24:There is, I suppose, the cheap drama of man sticking his nose into an area where it does little good except to expand his already overweened vanity.
      • 2009, Ariel Dorfman, The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds, page 6:Sometimes we manage to come up with original ways of viewing a world hardened, stratified, overweened by its own power, a world which believes itself as omnipotent as its technological achievements might seem to imply.
    3. (proscribed) To overwhelm.
      • 2003, Michael Gelven, What happens to us when we think: transformation and reality, page 44:The invasion of a vast enemy host upon the unprepared is unstoppable; the huge phalanx of tanks overweens our small army of trucks and rifles; ...

    Derived terms

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