overpower

Etymology

It is formed from English over- + power.^[2][3][4][5] The OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged take the second part as the noun, Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford as the verb.^[2][4][3][6] The noun is from Anglo-Norman pouair and Old French povoir.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To defeat or overcome with superior force; to reduce to submission: 1597, in Shakespeare's Richard II.^[2][4] Etymonline gives the 1590s and Dictionary.com 1585–95.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

From 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, the verb was used of something stronger making a quality weaker or imperceptible.^[2][6] In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) it was used of an emotion or fatigue overwhelming a person, chiefly in the passive.^[2][6] The Historical Thesaurus places the first sense among verbs of subjugation and of gaining mastery over, and the 1646 sense among verbs of crushing or stifling.^[7] Johnson (1755) defined it as "to be predominant over; to oppress by superiority", with quotations from Milton, Boyle, South and Dryden.^[8] A noun overpower meant the state of being too powerful in Bacon's Essays (1625) and a superior power from 1887.^[2] Modern dictionaries add the sense of supplying something with more power than it needs.^[4][9]

Timeline

• 1597 – to defeat or overcome with superior force.^[2][4]
• 1625 – noun, a state of being too powerful (obsolete).^[2]
• 1646 – to weaken or make imperceptible by greater intensity.^[2]
• 1667 – of an emotion or fatigue, to overwhelm a person.^[2]
• 1887 – noun, a superior or supreme power.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To defeat or subdue by greater force: Two guards overpowered the intruder.^[4][9][2]
2. To affect so strongly as to make helpless; to overwhelm: The heat overpowered several runners.^[4][9][2]
3. To make something weaker or imperceptible by greater intensity: The garlic overpowered the other flavours.^[2][6]
4. To supply with more power than is needed.^[4][9]

Word family

• overpoweringly
• overpowering

Related words

• power

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins