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
Spektor said that despite the Biden administration’s attempt to cajole, rather than browbeat, developing nations into supporting its global priorities, they would probably remain wary.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 29, 2023
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 hope you don’t think we’re gonna browbeat our students to please you’all,” she said.
From "Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High" by Melba Pattillo Beals
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
Underwritten and a smidge too long, “Caught” is marred by an over-excited musical score that browbeats where it should tease.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 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
And Miss Alcott is fond of working her story around, so that she can better rub in a moral precept—and the moral sometimes browbeats the story.
From Essays Before a Sonata by Charles Ives
But the truth is they had to be browbeaten into leading that revolution.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 16, 2023
"I don't expect you will be browbeaten by No 10 to do radical or strange new policies," he told them, but he added there was "no excuse to take your foot off the pedal".
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2022
Among the adversaries that Musk has browbeaten, count the board of Twitter.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2022
In his statement Tuesday, he also suggested that they were racially motivated — James and the newly elected Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, are Black — and that his accountants had been browbeaten into quitting.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 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
He named Quintero as his accomplice only after a browbeating from the authorities, who wanted to frame Quintero for a crime he didn’t commit, Trujillo told the jury.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
"Hopefully they are done in a memorable enough way that it sticks in people's heads and is more of an inspirational thing rather than browbeating people into feeling bad about not saving the planet."
From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2026
The question is whether the party now meekly succumbs to the browbeating:
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 14, 2026
His browbeating got so bad that Judge Lewis Kaplan was forced to repeatedly interrupt and reprimand Tacopino.
From Salon ● May 1, 2023
“By bullying and browbeating anybody who tries to stop you. Chaplain, get me my uniform! It’s around this hospital somewhere. For once in your life, succeed at something.”
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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.
