The Collaborative International Dictionary
Overween \O`ver*ween"\, v. t. [AS. oferw[=e]nian. See Over, and Ween.] To think too highly or arrogantly; to regard one's own thinking or conclusions too highly; hence, to be egotistic, arrogant, or rash, in opinion; to think conceitedly; to presume.
They that overween,
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen.
--Milton.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context ergative English) To think too highly or arrogantly of (oneself). 2 To make or render arrogant and overweening. 3 (context proscribed English) To overwhelm.
Usage examples of "overween".
The creation of robots was looked upon as the prime example of the overweening arrogance of humanity, of its attempt to take on, through misdirected science, the mantle of the divine.
Cap was awed, in spite of his overweening dogmatism, by the earnest simplicity of the Pathfinder, though he did not relish the idea of believing a fact which, for many years, he had pertinaciously insisted could not be true.
So that if men were dealing with no very hard matter, and their hearts were high and overweening, he would come home at whiles with unbloodied blade.
An overweening ambition was the flaw Adams so often attributed to others, that he warned his sons against, and that privately he recognized in himself.
One of the Forsaken, trapped with her own overweening pride and held prisoner in the midst of Aes Sedai.
Truly the Sultan of Alpha Centauri must be a monarch of overweening ambition, he thought.
But at present I am engaged in a project of far greater importance than the concocting of alcoholic libations for overweening humans.
Sir Ali was become apt at aping not only their speech but their air of superiority, their overweening arrogance, and their utter contempt for any of nonnoble birth.
Then, swallowing his overweening pride, he dispatched pleas for assistance to the other three Ehleenee High Lords of the mainland principalities.
Overall, his expression was of overweening arrogance, as if even those blue bloods lining the Avenue were beneath his notice.
My first lover on Helios Station, a young particle physicist named Thom, proved overweening in his affections.
Also, we cannot believe that our Sanctified Emperor Don Carlos can be other than scandalized by the iniquitous, salacious, and impious prattlings of this overweening specimen of a dunghill race.
Something had to be done to rein in the overweening Spanish and Moorish factions, lest all Italy be laid waste by them and their imported barbarians.
The Nakeds faced a Camelotian dilemma: whether to accede to the realities of social stratification and capitulate to appearances as eveiything and deny your own hunger and seek contentment in conformity and tone down your spiel, spritz, shtick, and performance capability and rework it to suit a mainstream audience-or go iconoclastic all the way and fuck this overweening adolescent urge to BELONG.