bend to one's will
English edit
Verb edit
bend to one's will (third-person singular simple present bends to one's will, present participle bending to one's will, simple past and past participle bent to one's will)
- (idiomatic, transitive) To compel someone or something to conform to one's desires.
- 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci, act 4, sc. 1:
- Cenci: For Beatrice worse terrors are in store / To bend her to my will.
Lucretia: Oh! to what will? / What cruel sufferings more than she has known / Canst thou inflict?
- 1892, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet”, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:
- His wicked lust for gold kindled at the news, and he bent her to his will.
- 2019 August 6, Dwight Garner, "Toni Morrison, a Writer of Many Gifts Who Bent Language to Her Will, New York Times (retrieved 23 Aug 2019):
- Morrison had a superfluity of gifts and, like few other writers of her era, bent language to her will.