Daunten

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To intimidate or discourage someone by making them lose confidence in their ability to succeed
2. To dishearten or unnerve a person through threats or displays of strength that inspire fear
3. To shake someone's resolve by making a challenge seem too difficult or overwhelming to face

Etymology: Before it meant to intimidate, this word meant to tame. It descends from Latin "domitare," "to tame," a frequentative of "domare," which is also the source of "indomitable." Old French turned that Latin verb into "danter" and "donter," meaning to subdue or overcome, and English borrowed it in the Middle Ages as "daunten" and "dauntin," with the same sense of bringing something under control. The modern "daunt" is the shortened form of that earlier verb, and the sense narrowed over time from physically subduing a creature to subduing a person's courage. "Daunten" itself is the older form with the Middle English infinitive ending "-en," which survived for centuries before falling out of use, so it now appears mainly in older texts and in discussions of the word's history.