beetle-browed

American  

[beet-l-broud] / ˈbit lˌbraʊd /

adjective

1. having heavy projecting eyebrows.

2. scowling or sullen.

---

beetle-browed British  

adjective

1. having bushy or overhanging eyebrows

2. sullen in appearance; scowling

---

Etymology

Origin of beetle-browed

1325–75; Middle English bitel-browed, probably with bitel sharp(-edged), Old English *bitel ( beetle ¹ ); brow, -ed ³

Example Sentences

A beetle-browed veteran of stage and screen, Mr. Constantine appeared in a half-dozen Broadway plays and more than 180 movies and television shows.

From Washington Post • Sep. 9, 2021

Like The Matrix two years earlier, Donnie Darko became the subject of many a beetle-browed academic monograph and much furious internet-geek debate.

From The Guardian • Dec. 19, 2016

The voice too is the one we know so well from the films and summons the familiar face: lugubrious, disheveled, and beetle-browed, perennially squinting as though against the blinding light of the universe’s final catastrophe.

From Slate • May 5, 2015

He has, Mr. Gardiner writes, “the look of a man etched with life’s travails — beetle-browed, with shallow eye sockets, asymmetrical eyes and slightly droopy eyelids.”

From New York Times • Apr. 29, 2015

One was the conviction of the stocky, beetle-browed Hungarian physicist that the lethargic pace of thermonuclear research had placed the United States at the mercy of the Soviet Union.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik