Overweening vs Overween - What's the difference?

overweening | overween |

As verbs the difference between overweening and overween

is that overweening is while overween is (ergative) to think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself).

As an adjective overweening

is unduly confident; arrogant; presumptuous; conceited.

As a noun overweening

is an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's abilities; presumption, arrogance.

overweening

English

Adjective

(en adjective)

Unduly confident; arrogant; presumptuous; conceited.

* Shakespeare

Here's an overweening rogue.

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

*1870 ,

*:No success rendered him overweening and no disaster was ever known to stagger his firmness.

*1908 , Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning,

*:The Senate was displaying an overweening hauteur as if it were the government.

Exaggerated, excessive

* {{quote-web

, date=20150104 , year= , first= , last= , author=Jonathan Rauch , authorlink= , title=How to Make Men Free , site=NY Times citation , archiveorg= , accessdate=21050215 , passage=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. }}

Derived terms

* overweeningly * overweeningness

Noun

(-)

An excessively high opinion of oneself or one's abilities; presumption, arrogance.

*, II.12:

*:Let us suppresse this over-weening .

Verb

(head)

overween

English

Verb

(en verb)

(ergative) To think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself).

* (rfdate), Milton, Sonnet IX :

and they that overween , / And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,

* 2005 , A. J. Liebling, published in Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer , page 327:

The clouds on Futurity Day bore out in a general way this prognostication. But he overweened himself.

To make or render arrogant and overweening.

* 1987 October, in Field & Stream , volume 92, number 6, page 24:

There is, I suppose, the cheap drama of man sticking his nose into an area where it does little good except to expand his already overweened vanity.

* 2009 , Ariel Dorfman, The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds , page 6:

Sometimes we manage to come up with original ways of viewing a world hardened, stratified, overweened by its own power, a world which believes itself as omnipotent as its technological achievements might seem to imply.

(proscribed) To overwhelm.

* 2003 , Michael Gelven, What happens to us when we think: transformation and reality , page 44:

The invasion of a vast enemy host upon the unprepared is unstoppable; the huge phalanx of tanks overweens our small army of trucks and rifles;

Derived terms

* overweening

References

* Webster 1913