browbeat
Americanverb (used with object)
-
browbeats,
present (3rd person singular)
-
browbeat,
past
-
browbeaten,
past participle
-
browbeating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
browbeatsimple
-
browbeatssimple
-
have browbeatenperfect
-
has browbeatenperfect
-
am browbeatingprogressive
-
are browbeatingprogressive
-
is browbeatingprogressive
-
have been browbeatingperfect progressive
-
has been browbeatingperfect progressive
Past
-
browbeatsimple
-
had browbeatenperfect
-
was browbeatingprogressive
-
were browbeatingprogressive
-
had been browbeatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of browbeat
Explanation
To browbeat is to intimidate with language. Picture yourself in a police station. The cops are trying to get you to talk by using tough, even abusive, language. They are browbeating you. When someone browbeats you, they're giving you a beating with their mouth and their mind. If your parents have to browbeat you into cleaning your room, they nag you, yell at you and they may even make fun of you and your bad cleaning habits. While the word brow means forehead, think that they're using their head, or brow, to beat you down. It's a figurative, rather than a literal, beating.
Vocabulary lists containing browbeat
100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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The Secret Life of Bees
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List 6
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Dodgers management didn’t browbeat Treinen and Call, and that’s fine — ballplayers should be entitled to share their personal thoughts, however noxious.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
But when things started to get "really crazy", she browbeat her parents into coming with her.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2025
I was in no position to browbeat her for it.
From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2024
Musk used a lot of jargon to explain what he browbeat his staff into doing, but it's not hard to read between the lines.
From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2023
I took Master Hemme’s hair from the student and recognized him as Basil, the boy Hemme had browbeat yesterday.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
The actor was shown to no less domineering effect in The Great Santini, playing a frustrated Marine pilot who hectors and browbeats his teenage children.
From BBC ● Feb. 16, 2026
It begins with light comedy, as Joan outwits or browbeats squires, soldiers, courtiers and even an archbishop into letting her have her way.
From New York Times ● Apr. 26, 2018
Brown browbeats them into playing what he’s got in mind, explaining that they should treat all of their instruments as drums, and suddenly the song comes together.
From Slate ● Jul. 31, 2014
In a stream of phone calls, he browbeats immigration officials, jawbones local reporters about the case and communes via video with Mr. Nabeel.
From New York Times ● Mar. 6, 2011
He never browbeats any one, and never toadies any one.
From Phineas Finn The Irish Member by Anthony Trollope
And when enough people feel shamed into silence and emotionally browbeaten into shutting down, things boil over.
From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2025
But the truth is they had to be browbeaten into leading that revolution.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 16, 2023
In an age when batters are browbeaten with launch angles aimed to produce longballs, the Guardians are an anomaly.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 12, 2022
As the tragedies accumulated midshow, I started to feel a little browbeaten by the cast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2022
He had been browbeaten and humiliated successively that morning by Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn and Corporal Whitcomb.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
The question is whether the party now meekly succumbs to the browbeating:
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 14, 2026
Still, he insists on browbeating others to support a cause as lost as, well, making fetch happen.
From Salon ● Nov. 22, 2024
He’d rather sleep late than wake up before dawn for a grueling day of fixing cars under his brother’s browbeating supervision.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2024
She often used a combination of charm and intense browbeating to convince the most reluctant members of the community to speak out in print or on TV.
From BBC ● May 18, 2024
Now he was stuck in the middle of an increasingly acrimonious debate between the browbeating Lawrence and the bedridden Compton.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
