What's the difference between overbearing and overweening?

Overbearing


Definition:

  • (a.) Overpowering; subduing; repressing.
  • (a.) Aggressively haughty; arrogant; domineering; tyrannical; dictatorial; insolent.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her childhood - split between a boisterous outdoorsiness and an intense inner life - was dominated by her overbearing mother, with whom she fought "steadily but reluctantly" until her death.
  • (2) "[In the] last farm bill debate in 2008, Rep Earl Blumenauer heroically tried to force a vote on food aid reform, but was quashed by an overbearing rules committee, which wouldn't permit him to offer the amendment.
  • (3) The ditziness, the choice between the good man and the bad boy (Darcy and Cleaver), the overbearing parents all seemed infantilising.
  • (4) But the British institutions can still provide obstacles to overbearing Prime Ministers.
  • (5) It's about a child star and his overbearing parents and his agent and the studio, lawyers, therapists, everything.
  • (6) "Transplanting the Pirates Of The Caribbean aesthetic to the Wild Wild West proves disastrous in The Lone Ranger, an indigestible swill of forced humour and oversized, overbearing action sequences," he writes.
  • (7) "The state remains as bloated, overbearing and inefficient as ever.
  • (8) The heroic supposition appears to be that an overbearing state is somehow suppressing entrepreneurial spirit in areas such as the north-east, and that private enterprise will naturally burst forth once the public sector is cut down to size.
  • (9) The atmosphere inside the grounds has been good, even if Fifa's corporatism can be overbearing.
  • (10) Scotland would be a counterweight to London's huge, overbearing influence over the British economy.
  • (11) He never got on with his overbearing mother, Rosalind, but idealised his father Edward, who, as captain of the former passenger steamer Rawalpindi, had gone down with his ship and 263 men after the attack by the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst in November 1939.
  • (12) The alternative is that they'll be exactly like their online personas – overbearing and needy and desperate to react to everything with a tedious one-liner.
  • (13) Overbearing, ostentatious, and incongruous, don't you think?"
  • (14) To the authorities in Zug and Zurich, Rich was a victim of an overbearing US prosecutorial system - a system that had overreached itself in trying to have him extradited from Switzerland.
  • (15) Lyrically it is a bit overbearing, and there’s no mention of food or vodka, which is a bit strange.
  • (16) He wants recognition and respect from the international community, just as he wanted it (and probably did not get it) from his overbearing father and dysfunctional mafia family.
  • (17) Part of Manning's motivation, the defence has argued, was that he believed the US government to be overbearingly secretive, but again the prosecutors contend that is irrelevant to the question of his guilt or innocence.
  • (18) I found Mr Mitchell’s tone overbearing, but he did not swear at us.
  • (19) McKillop tried to defend his own tenure on the board, insisting Goodwin had not been overbearing and that the ABN deal was agreed by the entire board.
  • (20) In Out Of Place (1999), the memoir of his childhood and youth, Said described his father, who called himself William to emphasise his adopted American identity, as overbearing and uncommunicative.

Overweening


Definition:

  • (a.) Unduly confident; arrogant; presumptuous; conceited.
  • (n.) Conceit; arrogance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Pakistan's recently elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, centre, will be taking on the country's overweening military not just Pervez Musharraf.
  • (2) Most are decades old – the overweening army, the confused place of Islam, the covert support for jihad, deep-rooted corruption, the poisoned bond with America.
  • (3) "No fundamental rights are worth the paper they are written upon unless they can be enforced, especially against overweening and corruptive authorities.
  • (4) This period is often evoked in the films in which he played an overweening ham in fifth-rate shows.
  • (5) The overweening Edinburgh Comedy Festival brand is officially defunct now, and this proliferation of venues, far beyond the so-called Big Four, is a merry jig on its grave.
  • (6) No stranger to accusations of overweening political influence or questionable tax affairs, the media mogul waded into the scandal over Google’s UK tax affairs by accusing the US tech giant of both.
  • (7) The Treasury has also attacked subsidies for renewable energy, which energy experts and green campaigners maintain would provide a lower-cost alternative to the overweening dependence on fossil fuel.
  • (8) The relationship between the museum and Manifesta has been difficult, not least because of its overweening internal bureaucracy.
  • (9) When a group of anti-war activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on 8 March 1971 they hoped that they would be hitting the bureau’s overweening director, J Edgar Hoover, where it hurt most.
  • (10) We tend to think that were he alive now he would be excoriating those things we think of as Orwellian – CCTV, the communications data bill (AKA snooping bill) that would force email providers to keep records of who messages whom and when, all the choke-holds an overweening state puts on our collective throat.
  • (11) He is a Jew with no religion who has questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel; a naturalised American citizen who is a consistent critic of overweening US power; a person of the left who subscribes to no leftist ideology.
  • (12) We're looking at a situation far worse than the simple avoidance of basic rights such as pensions and paid holiday; it's a system in which poverty is actively enforced by overweening employers whose convenience comes at the price of their employees' dignity.
  • (13) A treason trial would mark the first time in Pakistan's history that a military ruler has been held accountable, and the decision was cheered by many who believe the country's overweening army needs to accept the primacy of elected politicians.
  • (14) They range from patriotic rhetoric, appeals to national sentiment and identity, claims of moral superiority, fear of the other, and the delegitimisation and dehumanisation of the “enemy” to real-time, mass-media communications, mass surveillance, and the overweening power, reach and legal force of a modern-day government.
  • (15) Click image for graphic Illustration: Paul Scruton and Finbarr Sheehy for the Guardian "Smoke and mirrors will not protect media plurality in the UK from the overweening influence of News Corporation," said a spokesman for an alliance of media groups including BT and the publishers of the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
  • (16) In the end, only business could furnish Johnson with the opportunity to build the overweening monuments his ego craved.
  • (17) All the essential elements are there: overweening ambition, a poisoning, a sink of corruption, treachery and blackmail.
  • (18) "Smoke and mirrors will not protect media plurality in the UK from the overweening influence of News Corporation," he said.
  • (19) We're all afraid of the gushing, overweening child inside us.
  • (20) The cathedral echoed with laughter, music, dance – and some sharp rebukes to overweening power: a fitting way to celebrate the 80th birthday of South Africa's spiritual conscience, archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu .