overbearing
overbearing is the present participle and gerund of overbear.
Meaning of overbear
Verb
overbear (third-person singular simple present overbears, present participle overbearing, simple past overbore, past participle overborne)
- To carry over.
- To push through by physical weight or strength; to overwhelm, overcome.
- I attacked first and they were overborne, / Glad to apologize and even suing / Pardon for what they'd never thought of doing.1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 287
- To prevail over; to dominate, overpower; to oppress.
- It often fals, in course of common life, / That right long time is overborne of wrong […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- To produce an overabundance of fruit.
Adjective
overbearing (comparative more overbearing, superlative most overbearing)
- Overly bossy, domineering, arrogant, forceful, intense, or annoying.
- In the same year, 1844, negotiations were begun to strengthen the North Union's position by an amalgamation with the Liverpool & Manchester and Grand Junction companies, but at the eleventh hour the shareholders took exception to the rather overbearing ways of the Grand Junction, and backed out.1960 February, M. D. Greville and G. O. Holt, “Railway Development in Preston—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 100
- Synonyms:
- demanding, dictatorial, dominant, haughty, high-handed
Synonyms of overbearing
Forms of overbearing
| comparative | more overbearing |
|---|---|
| superlative | most overbearing |
Origin of overbearing
From overbear (“to bear down (on)”) + -ing.
Words formed from overbearing
Questions about overbearing
- What does overbearing mean?
- Overbearing means overly bossy, domineering, arrogant, forceful, intense, or annoying.
- What is overbearing the present participle and gerund of?
- Overbearing is the present participle and gerund of overbear.
- What part of speech is overbearing?
- Overbearing is an adjective.
Words near overbearing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overbearing (page history and authors); overbear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “overbearing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overbearing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.