bend to someone's will

present singular third person bends to someone's will · participle present bending to someone's will · participle past bent to someone's will · past bent to someone's will

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo yield to persuasion or other pressure originating from someone.

   Other branches of government often bent to his will.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1893, Martha Finley, chapter 15, in The Tragedy of Wild River Valley

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

   1919, George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, act 2