daunt
Americanverb
-
to intimidate
-
to dishearten
Usage
What does daunt mean? Daunt means to intimidate.This intimidation can be a pretty serious fear, like that of a warrior who daunts enemies in battle. More commonly, though, daunt means to intimidate in a way that’s disheartening, like a task that daunts you because it seems impossible.People who are intimidated in such a way can be described with the adjective daunted. An even more commonly used adjective is daunting, which comes from the continuous tense (the -ing form) of daunt. If a task is daunting, it’s intimidating or overwhelming in a way that makes you not even want to try to do it.Example: When I first started at this job, I was really daunted by my first assignment, which was reorganizing 10 years’ worth of files.
Other Word Forms
- daunter noun
- dauntingly adverb
- dauntingness noun
- undaunting adjective
Etymology
Origin of daunt
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English da(u)nten, from Anglo-French da(u)nter, Old French danter, alteration of donter (probably by influence of dangier “power, authority”; danger ), from Latin domitāre “to tame,” derivative of domitus “tamed,” past participle of domāre “to tame”
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.
But when police started to investigate, they found what one officer described as "a daunting absence of clues".
From BBC
"It's pretty daunting at the minute and I can only see it getting worse before it gets better to be honest," he said.
From BBC
"There's nowhere else like it. It's as beautiful as it is daunting."
From Science Daily
Instead, two heavy back-to-back defeats, with two games left, makes that trip to Paris now very daunting.
From BBC
The Clarets are still eight points from safety in their daunting fight for survival.
From Barron's
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.
