Overweening meaning

ōvər-wēnĭng
Exaggerated; excessive.
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The definition of overweening is someone who is arrogant or has excessive pride and confidence.

Someone who brags that he is the best tennis player in the world and claims he can beat all rivals when that's unlikely to be true is an example of someone who would be described as overweening.

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Presumptuously arrogant; overbearing.

Had a witty but overweening manner about him.

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Excessive; immoderate.

Overweening ambition.

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Arrogant; excessively proud.
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  • 1870, Carl Schurz, George H. Thomas Eulogy.
    No success rendered him overweening and no disaster was ever known to stagger his firmness.
  • 1908, Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning, A Sketch of Carl Schurz's Political Career.
    The Senate was displaying an overweening hauteur as if it were the government.

She wins one modeling contest in Montana and suddenly she's overweening.

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(now rare) An excessively high opinion of oneself or one's abilities; presumption, arrogance.
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Present participle of overween.
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Origin of overweening

  • From overween +"Ž -ing.

    From Wiktionary

Overweening Sentence Examples

  • Mysticism, on the other hand, is marked on its speculative side by even an overweening confidence in human reason.

  • His chief fault is his overweening haughtiness, due to an over-exalted opinion of his position, which leads him to insult Chryses and Achilles, thereby bringing great disaster upon the Greeks.

  • Darnley was esteemed handsome, though his portraits give an opposite impression; his native qualities of cowardice, perfidy, profligacy and overweening arrogance were at first concealed, and in mid April 1565 Lethington was sent to London, not to renew the negotiations with Leicester (as had been designed till the 31st of March), but to announce Mary's intended wedding with her cousin.

  • Seeing the barons quarrelling among themselves, and Montfort accused of ambition and overweening masterfulness by many of his colleagues, the king took heart.

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Words near overweening in the Dictionary