overawe

• over-awe

From over- +‎ awe.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əʊvəˈɹɔː/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /oʊvɚˈɔ/
• Rhymes: -ɔː
• Hyphenation: over‧awe

overawe (third-person singular simple present overawes, present participle overawing, simple past and past participle overawed)

1. (transitive) To restrain, subdue, or control by awe; to cow. [from 16th c.]
   • 1591, William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, part 1:

     None doe you like, but an effeminate Prince, Whom like a Schoole-boy you may ouer-awe.

   • 1849, Herman Melville, Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Volume I, ch. 57:

     His free and easy carriage evinced, that though acknowledging my assumptions, he was no way overawed by them; treating me as familiarly, indeed, as if I were a mere mortal, one of the abject generation of mushrooms.

   • 2000, Alasdair Gray, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury 2002, p. 61:

     He kept the biggest estates, and where he lacked troops to overawe the natives he evicted the natives and made a game reserve.

• underwhelm