English

Adjective

overweening ‎(comparative more overweening, superlative most overweening)

1. Unduly confident; arrogant; presumptuous; conceited.
   • Shakespeare

     Here's an overweening rogue.

   She wins one modeling contest in Montana and suddenly she's overweening.

   • 1870, Carl Schurz, George H. Thomas Eulogy

     No success rendered him overweening and no disaster was ever known to stagger his firmness.

   • 1908, Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning, A Sketch of Carl Schurz's Political Career

     The Senate was displaying an overweening hauteur as if it were the government.

2. Exaggerated, excessive
   • 2015 January 4, Jonathan Rauch, “How to Make Men Free”, in NY Times, retrieved 21050215:

     The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages.

Translations

Derived terms

Noun

overweening ‎(countable and uncountable, plural overweenings)

1. (now rare) An excessively high opinion of oneself or one's abilities; presumption, arrogance.
   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.12:

     Let us suppresse this over-weening [transl. cuider], the first foundation of the tyrannie of the wicked spirit […].

Verb

overweening

1. present participle of overween