daunt

English

Etymology

From Middle English daunten, from Old French danter, donter (“to tame”), from Latin domitō (“tame”, verb), frequentative of Latin domō (“tame, conquer”, verb), from Proto-Italic *domaō, from Proto-Indo-European *demh₂- (“to domesticate, tame”). Doublet of dompt.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɔːnt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (some accents) IPA^(key): /dɑːnt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /dɔnt/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /dɑnt/
• Rhymes: -ɔːnt, -ɑːnt

Verb

daunt (third-person singular simple present daunts, present participle daunting, simple past and past participle daunted)

1. (transitive) To discourage, intimidate.
   • 1611, Iohn Speed [i.e., John Speed], “Harold the Second of that Name, the Sonne of Earle Goodwine, and Thirtie Eight Monarch of the Englishmen, ”, in The History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of yͤ Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans. , London: William Hall and John Beale, for John Sudbury and George Humble, , →OCLC, book VIII ( ), paragraph 38, page 407, column 1:

     [T]hey [the English] valiantly, and vvith the ſlaughter of many, put backe the enemy: vvhich vvas ſo farre from daunting the Normans, that by it they vvere more vvhetted to re-enforce themſelues vpon them: […]

   • , Eugène Scribe, translated by Charles Lamb Kenney, L’Africaine. An Opera in Five Acts,  The Music by Giacomo Meyerbeer. Translated into English , London: Published and sold by Chappell & Co., , Boosey & Co., , →OCLC, act III, page 34:

     Death I'll meet, my soul no terrors daunting, / Take the life for which thy heart is panting, / Spare not thou, though he spare, his life granting, / Or let death end us both at a blow.

   • 1912, Alexander Berkman, chapter 17, in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist:

     No, I shall not disgrace the Cause, I shall not grieve my comrades by weak surrender! I will fight and struggle, and not be daunted by threat or torture.

   • 1913, Paul Laurence Dunbar, “A Lost Dream”, in The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar:

     Ah, I have changed, I do not know / Why lonely hours affect me so. / In days of yore, this were not wont, / No loneliness my soul could daunt.

2. (transitive) To overwhelm.

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

• Dutan

Middle English

Verb

daunt

1. Alternative form of daunten