overweening
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /əʊvəˈwiːnɪŋ/
ipa: /oʊvɚˈwinɪŋ/
rhymes: -iːnɪŋ
Forms: form: more overweening
form: most overweening
form: over-weening
Etymology: From Middle English overweninge, equivalent to overween + -ing. Cognate with obsolete Dutch overwanig, overwaand (“presumptuous; cocky; conceited”).
Senses: examples: text: She wins one modeling contest in Montana and suddenly she’s overweening.
text: Heere's an ouer-weening rogue.
ref: c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene v], page 263, column 2:
text: The offer freely given was freely accepted, this gentleman already standing high in their opinion from his conduct to the Count; nor could they doubt that Lady Anne had lost herself many years of pleasant, and probably profitable intercourse with him, from her own acrimony of temper and overweening pride of manners;[…]
ref: 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LXIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 175:
text: No success rendered him overweening and no disaster was ever known to stagger his firmness.
ref: 1870, Carl Schurz, George H. Thomas Eulogy:
text: The Senate was displaying an overweening hauteur as if it were the government.
ref: 1908, Frederic Bancroft, William A. Dunning, A Sketch of Carl Schurz’s Political Career:
text: The Valley prizes overweening ambition but expects it to be “rifle-focussed” on making the world’s best houseboat-rental platform or Cognac-delivery service.
ref: 2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker:
text: While they ultimately came to the same conclusion, the pre-emptive tweet made it harder to rebut the court's judgment that they were “supine servants of an overweening master”.
ref: 2024 May 18, Tabby Kinder, Stephen Morris, “Tesla chair on Musk: ‘I might wake up to a tweet. I don't wake up to a strategy shift’”, in FT Weekend, page 15:
synonyms: word: presumptuous
word: conceited
word: airy
word: arrogant
word: authoritarian
word: biggity
word: big-headed
word: blustery
word: boastful
word: bombastic
word: buggish
word: cocky
word: conceited
word: disdainful
word: domineering
word: egotistical
word: entitled
word: flatulent
word: flaunting
word: full of oneself
word: grandiose
word: hankty
word: haught
word: haughty
word: haut
word: high-handed
word: high-hat
word: high and mighty
word: highfalutin
word: hoity-toity
word: holier-than-thou
word: imperious
word: inflated
word: insolent
word: la-di-da
word: ostentatious
word: overbearing
word: overweening
word: pompous
word: presumptuous
word: pretentious
word: priggish
word: puffed up
word: sanctimonious
word: self-important
word: snobbish
word: snooty
word: snotty
word: stout
word: stuck up
word: supercilious
word: thrasonic
word: thrasonical
word: toploftical
word: toplofty
word: tumid
word: turgid
word: uppish
word: uppity
word: uppy
word: upstage
word: vain
glosses: Unduly confident; arrogant.
examples: text: The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages.
ref: 2015 January 4, Jonathan Rauch, “How to Make Men Free”, in NY Times:
synonyms: word: immoderate
word: unrestrained
word: excessive
word: extravagant
word: unmeasured
word: unreasonable
word: extreme
word: immoderate
word: intemperate
word: lavish
word: nimious
word: obscene
word: overmuch
word: overweening
word: over the top
word: prodigal
word: undue
word: unrestrained
word: wanton
glosses: Exaggerated, excessive.
Derived terms: overweeningly
overweeningness