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
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
They will believe you can browbeat an extremely well-lawyered public company into getting out of a deal that has no apparent legal out.
From Slate ● Dec. 1, 2022
“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
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 one video clip, Arnold Palmer browbeats a fellow golfer into hustling to the tee box by sarcastically saying, “While we’re young!”
From New York Times ● Jun. 22, 2013
She browbeats her guest into giving her an estimate of the painting’s value — that is, if it is authentic.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2011
Money bellows," retorted Scarborough, "and bribes and browbeats, bully and coward that it is.
From The Cost by David Graham Phillips
Audiences who endured the Miramax era have been browbeaten to believe that the best picture Oscar should go to a period piece that chokes out a sob from audiences.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026
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
For once she was not going to be browbeaten.
From "Matilda" by Roald Dahl
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
For him, in fact, the swagger and browbeating are often an integral part of the negotiating process.
From BBC ● Mar. 11, 2025
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
His browbeating got so bad that Judge Lewis Kaplan was forced to repeatedly interrupt and reprimand Tacopino.
From Salon ● May 1, 2023
This divide-and-conquer strategy is better than repeatedly allowing counterexamples to intrude into the main line of an argument while browbeating readers into looking away.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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.
