Browbeat is a compound of brow + beat, originally meaning 'to bear down with stern looks'; from Old English brū ('brow') + bēatan ('to beat'). The historical trail runs through brū in Old English and bēatan in Old English. Morphologically, browbeat is transparent: it is a compound of brow + beat, originally meaning 'to bear down with stern looks'. Used as a verb, browbeat now means "intimidate or bully someone with stern or overbearing words", so the present definition can be read against the older forms and meanings. The same lexical family is also visible in derived forms such as browbeaten and browbeating and related forms such as brow and beat. The modern word remains analyzable through its parts, which makes the semantic connection unusually direct.