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
- (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.
- 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.
- (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; ...