daunt

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.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɔːnt/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /dɔnt/
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /dɑnt/
• Rhymes: -ɔːnt

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 ([The Danes] […]), 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: […]

   • [1865?], 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.

• Dutan

daunt

1. Alternative form of daunten