Definition of "overawe"

overawe

/əʊvəˈɹɔː/

verb
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.
  Quotations
  None doe you like, but an effeminate Prince, Whom like a Schoole-boy you may ouer-awe.
  1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)
  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.
  1849, Herman Melville, “ch. 57”, in Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, volume I
  He kept the biggest estates, and where he lacked troops to overawe the natives he evicted the natives and made a game reserve.
  2000, Alasdair Gray, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury, published 2002, page 61

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