What is beetle browed?

[Harmonious Discord]

Example: There was a beetle browed man siting at the desk.

[salinqmind]

An expression meaning someone, usually a man, with bushy eyebrows and a frowning/worried appearance. The dad on The Wonder Years fits the description well.

[Harmonious Discord]

Thanks

[Silophant]

Often, wizards are, either because of job-related stress or a spell gone wrong. Occasionally, both apply.

[Colibri]

Not just with bushy eyebrows, but with overhanging brows. Neanderthals are often described as being beetle-browed.

[jackdavinci]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Not just with bushy eyebrows, but with overhanging brows. Neanderthals are often described as being beetle-browed.

And Highlanders...

Why "beetle" though?

[RealityChuck]

The OED isn't sure:

Originally Posted by OED

(As the 14-15th c. form had bitel-, bytel-, it has been proposed to identify it with BITEL a. ‘biting, cutting like a sharp-edged tool,’ used by Ormin and Layamon, which is phonetically possible: but, beside the hardly satisfactory sense, there is the difficulty that bitel appears to have been obsolete for 160 years when the first example of bitel-brouwed occurs. It is more likely that the word here is one of the two ns. BEETLE, both extant in 14th c., and both having the form bitel. The choice depends largely upon the exact meaning originally attached to ‘beetle-browed,’ which was a reproachful epithet, and appears to have referred to the shaggy prominence of the eye-brows. (Brow in ME. was always = eyebrow, not = forehead.) It is probable therefore (as suggested by Dr. F. Chance) that the comparison is to the short tufted antennæ of some species of beetles, projecting at right angles to the head, which may have been called ‘eyebrows’ in Eng. as well as in Fr.; for in French the expression sourcils de hanneton ‘cockchafers' eyebrows’ is the name given to a species of fringe made in imitation of the antennæ of these insects.)]

They lean toward beetle antennae.

[DrFidelius]

I'm going with the eyes seeming to be partly hidden, so they named it after Beetle Bailey.

I admit there are some difficulties I need to work out for this proposal.

[muttrox]

I've never heard this expression. It sounds like a corruption of "browbeaten". As in, you are beetle browed if you've been browbeaten. Or maybe the other way around...

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

I seem to recall Edgar Rice Burroughs describing the elder, fuddy-duddy members of various ape clans as “beetle-browed.”

[racer72]

Beetle browed.

Beatle browed.

Caterpillar browed.

[DrFidelius]

"in French the expression sourcils de hanneton ‘cockchafers' eyebrows’ "

Sound more like a occupation related injury.

[Polycarp]

Beatle browed

(But George's picture gives a good representation of what 'beetle browed' means, too.)

I believe the term derives from the fact that the carapaces of some beetles overhang their eyes, producing the same visual effect as large, prominent eyebrow ridges in humans.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by DrFidelius

"in French the expression sourcils de hanneton ‘cockchafers' eyebrows’ "

Sound more like a occupation related injury.

Cockchafer. (The second picture on the Wiki page gives a good example of beetle browed as applied to a beetle.)

[Polycarp]

And while we're on the subject, I checked a couple of etymologies. The following is a composite of what I found:

Cockchafer, a genus of European scarab beetle, appears to have been named (in German) from cock (male poultry) + kepher (borrowed from Egyptian, meaning scarab beetle), the name meaning "scarab beetle with appurtenances resembling those of a cock (rooster)," presumably from its antennae and mouthparts, which are vaguely like those of a rooster.

[aldiboronti]

It could well be connected to the insect. . Here's the etymology from OED:

beetle, a.

[Found first in the comb. beetle-browed (1362); much later (1532), beetle is treated as a separate word in beetle brow(s; whence a derived verb to BEETLE (see next) formed by Shakespeare.

(As the 14-15th c. form had bitel-, bytel-, it has been proposed to identify it with BITEL a. ‘biting, cutting like a sharp-edged tool,’ used by Ormin and Layamon, which is phonetically possible: but, beside the hardly satisfactory sense, there is the difficulty that bitel appears to have been obsolete for 160 years when the first example of bitel-brouwed occurs. It is more likely that the word here is one of the two ns. BEETLE, both extant in 14th c., and both having the form bitel. The choice depends largely upon the exact meaning originally attached to ‘beetle-browed,’ which was a reproachful epithet, and appears to have referred to the shaggy prominence of the eye-brows. (Brow in ME. was always = eyebrow, not = forehead.) It is probable therefore (as suggested by Dr. F. Chance) that the comparison is to the short tufted antennæ of some species of beetles, projecting at right angles to the head, which may have been called ‘eyebrows’ in Eng. as well as in Fr.; for in French the expression sourcils de hanneton ‘cockchafers' eyebrows’ is the name given to a species of fringe made in imitation of the antennæ of these insects.)]