beetle-browed
Americanadjective
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having heavy projecting eyebrows.
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scowling or sullen.
adjective
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having bushy or overhanging eyebrows
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sullen in appearance; scowling
Etymology
Origin of beetle-browed
1325–75; Middle English bitel-browed, probably with bitel sharp(-edged), Old English *bitel ( see beetle 1); see brow, -ed 3
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.
Diminutive and wiry, with mournful, beetle-browed eyes and a raspy tenor voice, Mr. Aznavour lacked the rakish sex appeal and ebullience of chanteurs such as Maurice Chevalier and Yves Montand.
From Washington Post • Oct. 1, 2018
There he is, a burly, beetle-browed man of 60, handing out hot tea on the beaches at Lesbos, comforting a traumatised woman inside a makeshift studio and cooking kebabs on a barbecue at a dusty refugee camp.
From The Guardian • Sep. 17, 2017
The voice too is the one we know so well from the films and summons the familiar face: lugubrious, disheveled, and beetle-browed, perennially squinting as though against the blinding light of the universe’s final catastrophe.
From Slate • May 5, 2015
He has, Mr. Gardiner writes, “the look of a man etched with life’s travails — beetle-browed, with shallow eye sockets, asymmetrical eyes and slightly droopy eyelids.”
From New York Times • Apr. 29, 2015
One was the conviction of the stocky, beetle-browed Hungarian physicist that the lethargic pace of thermonuclear research had placed the United States at the mercy of the Soviet Union.
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.
