browbeat
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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browbeatsimple
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browbeatssimple
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have browbeatenperfect
-
has browbeatenperfect
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am browbeatingprogressive
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are browbeatingprogressive
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is browbeatingprogressive
-
have been browbeatingperfect progressive
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has been browbeatingperfect progressive
Past
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browbeatsimple
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had browbeatenperfect
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was browbeatingprogressive
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were browbeatingprogressive
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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:
Instead, he’ll turn to his pool of henchmen and try to browbeat them through Senate confirmation.
From Slate ● May 31, 2025
But when things started to get "really crazy", she browbeat her parents into coming with her.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2025
But blunt rhetoric is often used only to browbeat others and distort facts.
From Salon ● Jun. 8, 2023
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
“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
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
He never browbeats any one, and never toadies any one.
From Phineas Finn The Irish Member by Trollope, Anthony
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
"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
Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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
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.
