bend to someone's will

English

Verb

bend to someone's will (third-person singular simple present bends to someone's will, present participle bending to someone's will, simple past and past participle bent to someone's will)

1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To yield to persuasion or other pressure originating from someone.
   • 1893, Martha Finley, chapter 15, in The Tragedy of Wild River Valley:

     Bangs beset her at every turn, meeting her in her walks and rides, coming on her when she was in the field, and could not escape from him, and urging his suit with persuasions, promises, and threats, determined to win her, in spite of the most firm and decided rejection repeated again and again. […] Bangs waxed more and more wroth at her steadfast refusal to bend to his will.

   • 1919, George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, act 2:

     […] this slavedriver, who spends his life making thousands of rough violent workmen bend to his will and sweat for him.

   • 2013 March 5, Simon Romero, "Hugo Chávez 1954-2013: A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement, New York Times (retrieved 23 Aug 2019):

     Other branches of government often bent to his will.

Related terms

• bend (someone or something) to one's will (transitive)
• bend someone's will (transitive)