daunt
Americanverb (used with object)
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daunts,
present (3rd person singular)
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daunted,
past participle, past
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daunting
present participle
verb
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to intimidate
-
to dishearten
Usage
What does daunt mean? Daunt means to intimidate. This intimidation can be a pretty serious fear, like that of a warrior who daunts enemies in battle. More commonly, though, daunt means to intimidate in a way that’s disheartening, like a task that daunts you because it seems impossible. People who are intimidated in such a way can be described with the adjective daunted. An even more commonly used adjective is daunting, which comes from the continuous tense (the -ing form) of daunt. If a task is daunting, it’s intimidating or overwhelming in a way that makes you not even want to try to do it. Example: When I first started at this job, I was really daunted by my first assignment, which was reorganizing 10 years’ worth of files.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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dauntsimple
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dauntssimple
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have dauntedperfect
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has dauntedperfect
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am dauntingprogressive
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are dauntingprogressive
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is dauntingprogressive
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have been dauntingperfect progressive
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has been dauntingperfect progressive
Past
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dauntedsimple
-
had dauntedperfect
-
was dauntingprogressive
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were dauntingprogressive
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had been dauntingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of daunt
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English da(u)nten, from Anglo-French da(u)nter, Old French danter, alteration of donter (probably by influence of dangier “power, authority”; see danger), from Latin domitāre “to tame,” derivative of domitus “tamed,” past participle of domāre “to tame”
Explanation
Daunt means to frighten or scare off. The Cowardly Lion's efforts to daunt Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man were less than successful. Daunt rhymes with haunt, another word which means to frighten, though in a creepier sense. Walking through your neighbors' haunted house on Halloween might daunt your little brother, even though he's unlikely to encounter anything scarier than plastic skeletons and ghosts made of sheets. Daunt often shows up as part of the adjective undaunted, which describes someone who remains unafraid or perseveres in the face of scary circumstances.
Vocabulary lists containing daunt
Uncanny, Creepy, or Downright Scary: Words For Halloween
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Beowulf: A New Telling
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"The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving
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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:
“Ragtime” draws a portrait of America at a time of turmoil with broad dramatic strokes and emotional specificity, a high-wire act that might daunt the likes of Houdini—yet another character in the show.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2025
Nor do they daunt the current crop of entrepreneurs, who are mostly recycling old buildings, not putting up new ones.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 5, 2023
"Don’t let anything daunt you or take you away from that mission. This legislation is not going to do that. Keep becoming a citizen of this country."
From Fox News ● Jan. 9, 2022
What about the corruption that has plagued this country and might daunt would-be émigrés?
From New York Times ● Nov. 14, 2021
The executive would not allow this news to daunt him.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
But as he gears up to release his third book on Tuesday, Tweedy admits the task of writing no longer daunts him the way it once did.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 6, 2023
But what he’s mostly done on hard courts is conquer what daunts him, by fighting the kinds of relentless battles that he relishes, as he did against a rising hard-court comer on Sunday.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 9, 2019
Each of the eight huge prints dazzles and daunts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2015
It daunts her to consider the situation’s basic math, the impossibility of matching her supplies to their numbers.
From New York Times ● Jul. 1, 2011
The thought of stealing it, in front of everyone, daunts me.
From "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black
But Cain, an interior decorator for 25 years, wasn’t daunted by the chaos that came with such an extensive project.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
The words of former champion and current world number one Judd Trump show that even experienced players at the top of the game remain daunted at the iconic Sheffield venue.
From BBC ● Apr. 26, 2026
The crash occurred shortly before midnight on March 22 and quickly put a renewed spotlight on close calls and near misses that have daunted U.S. runways in recent years.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
Paulson said older workers may be daunted by the potential costs, time and effort, as well as the potential stigma associated with being a whistleblower.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 10, 2025
Even Ruth looked daunted that sunny day the minibus dropped us in front of the farmhouse, circled round the little pond and disappeared up the slope.
From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Yet he is now preparing to do something most actors would find daunting even with perfect recall: performing a much-loved Samuel Beckett play alone on a London stage.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
But the sheer volume will be daunting, Content warned.
From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026
All this should help him make a success of his daunting role flying close to the sun.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2026
The most daunting challenge was intuiting what Bessette would have worn in the years before she met Kennedy and became one of the most photographed women in the world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
Beyond the daunting task of following the greatest hero in American history, Adams faced a double dilemma.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
