Picture the moment before you start something. The thing stands in front of you — a list, a mountain path, a new office, a first day — and it looks larger than you are. Nothing has hurt you and nothing is going to. What has happened is that the fight has quietly gone out of you. The old root under daunt is the word for taming an animal, which fits: the creature is still standing there, it has just stopped pulling.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary takes daunt back through Middle English daunten to Old French danter, donter 'to tame', and to Latin domāre 'to tame, conquer'. The modern feeling keeps the picture: the person is not removed, only tamed — the confidence has been taken out of them.
Wiktionary 把 daunt 追到中古英文 daunten，再到古法文 danter、donter（馴服），最上面是拉丁文 domāre（馴服、征服）。今天的用法還留著這個畫面：人沒有被移走，只是被馴住了——被拿掉的是那股信心。
Wiktionary entry for daunt, packet etymology_text (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:615317170:17855)
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原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Dauntname
- 1
A surname from Middle English.
dauntverb/dɔːnt/
- 1
To discourage, intimidate.
- [The English] valiantly, and with the ſlaughter of many, put backe the enemy: which was ſo farre from daunting the Normans, that by it they were more whetted to re-enforce themſelues vpon them[…]
- 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.
- 2
To overwhelm.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。