browbeat
to pressure or threaten someone
TRANSLATION
browbeat = jmd. einschüchtern, unter Druck setzen --- GOOGLE INDEX browbeat: approximately 2,500,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Anti-whaling countries have been trying to BROWBEAT Japan into dropping its whaling programmes for more than 20 years and it hasn't really worked.
(BBC News)
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Germany's president, Christian Wulff, is facing growing pressure to stand down following damaging revelations that he tried to BROWBEAT the editor of the country's top tabloid to kill an unflattering story about him.
(The Guardian)
(BBC News)
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Germany's president, Christian Wulff, is facing growing pressure to stand down following damaging revelations that he tried to BROWBEAT the editor of the country's top tabloid to kill an unflattering story about him.
(The Guardian)
Did you
know?
browbeat
verb
- to try to force someone to do something by threatening them or persuading them forcefully and unfairly
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
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Remember how teachers or your parents sometimes gave you that harsh look when you did something wrong by "furrowing" their brow? That's browbeating. The word stems from the idea of a person who sternly or arrogantly stares at another person in order to intimidate them. It derives from "brow," the hair above the eyelids, and beat. The implication is that someone beats another person - in a figurative sense - with their eyebrows by giving them a menacing look, thus making them feel under pressure.
Browbeating can occur at the highest levels of course. Edward Grey, who was Britain's foreign secretary during World War I, was immensely fond of his country estate at Fallodon in Northumberland. One day David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill fell into an argument over Grey's policies. Churchill, taking issue with his colleague's criticisms, came to Grey's defense.
Churchill thought that Grey would never let himself be browbeat by another country. To illustrate his point, he said "If the Germans held a gun to Grey's head and threatened to shoot him if he did not sign a treaty, he would never capitulate. He would tell them that a British minister never bows before such pressure."
"Ah," Lloyd George replied. "But the Germans wouldn't threaten to shoot him if he didn't sign. They'd threaten to kill all the squirrels at Fallodon. That would break him."
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SYNONYMS
badger, bully, coerce, daunt, hound, lean on, push around, strong-arm, terrorize
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Good managers don't browbeat to achieve their goals."
verb
- to try to force someone to do something by threatening them or persuading them forcefully and unfairly
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
---
Remember how teachers or your parents sometimes gave you that harsh look when you did something wrong by "furrowing" their brow? That's browbeating. The word stems from the idea of a person who sternly or arrogantly stares at another person in order to intimidate them. It derives from "brow," the hair above the eyelids, and beat. The implication is that someone beats another person - in a figurative sense - with their eyebrows by giving them a menacing look, thus making them feel under pressure.
Browbeating can occur at the highest levels of course. Edward Grey, who was Britain's foreign secretary during World War I, was immensely fond of his country estate at Fallodon in Northumberland. One day David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill fell into an argument over Grey's policies. Churchill, taking issue with his colleague's criticisms, came to Grey's defense.
Churchill thought that Grey would never let himself be browbeat by another country. To illustrate his point, he said "If the Germans held a gun to Grey's head and threatened to shoot him if he did not sign a treaty, he would never capitulate. He would tell them that a British minister never bows before such pressure."
"Ah," Lloyd George replied. "But the Germans wouldn't threaten to shoot him if he didn't sign. They'd threaten to kill all the squirrels at Fallodon. That would break him."
---
SYNONYMS
badger, bully, coerce, daunt, hound, lean on, push around, strong-arm, terrorize
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Good managers don't browbeat to achieve their goals."
