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:
Jeers to airlines who browbeat passengers into checking their carry-on bags at the gate, with agents threatening a possible delayed departure if enough travelers don’t give up their bags.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
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
I am reminded of that whole Gulf of America business, which allowed the administration to browbeat domestic airlines into geographical revisions of their in-flight maps.
From Slate ● Jun. 2, 2026
But when things started to get "really crazy", she browbeat her parents into coming with her.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2025
“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
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
But with that addition, he overcrows the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one less than himself.
From The Spirit of the Age Contemporary Portraits by William Hazlitt
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
As the tragedies accumulated midshow, I started to feel a little browbeaten by the cast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2022
"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
It was whispered in one browbeaten textile union that the mute was an organizer for the C.I.O.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
Several European officials said the leaders’ meeting went better than expected—a sign of both relief and diminished expectations after 18 months of browbeating from Washington.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 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
Representatives for the writers described it as a “lecture” and a browbeating session in which they were pressured to accept an Aug. 11 proposal from the AMPTP.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2023
One of the uglier early nomination hearings, Wittes reminds us, was the browbeating meted out to Thurgood Marshall in 1967 by such Southern segregationists as Strom Thurmond and Sam J. Ervin Jr.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 29, 2022
“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.
