These words are used to describe the character or actions of persons who are possessed of an exaggerated pride or who, often because of such pride, behave in an excessively determined, commanding or even tyrannical way. Overbearing , domineering and imperious refer to the latter group, persons in whom we can recognize a strong desire to exercise authority or at least o force their wishes on others; all three words suggest that the insistence on being dominant is based on a real or assumed superiority: an office manager who was overbearing in his relations with his staff; a young man who never attained any independence and initiative because he was always under the thumb of a domineering father, a multitude of imperious demands that were met with reluctance and ill will.

Arrogant means unduly pound of wealth, station, learning, achievements, etc. Because of his exaggerated sense of self, the arrogant person takes upon himself more power or authority than is rightly his: the general’s arrogant seizure of the powers of state at the end of the civil war. Haughty is much the same as arrogant in denotation, but there is in the haughty person more feeling of pride and less compulsion to dominate than in someone who is arrogant . The haughty man thinks highly of himself while holding others in contempt, and may be rude and boorish or at least icily reserved in his treatment of those he considers to be his inferiors: a haughty socialite who refused to attend her daughter’s wedding because she did not approve of the groom’s parents.