BESET • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Beset

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/bɪsˈɛt/ Listen

verb

Beset v. t. (past & past part. beset; pres. part. besetting)

To set or stud (anything) with ornaments or prominent objects. "A robe of azure beset with drops of gold." "The garden is so beset with all manner of sweet shrubs that it perfumes the air."

To hem in; to waylay; to surround; to besiege; to blockade. "Beset with foes." "Let thy troops beset our gates."

To set upon on all sides; to perplex; to harass; said of dangers, obstacles, etc. "Adam, sore beset, replied." "Beset with ills." "Incommodities which beset old age."

To occupy; to employ; to use up. (Obs.)

Synonyms: To surround; inclose; environ; hem in; besiege; encircle; encompass; embarrass; urge; press.

See images of 'Beset'

Etymology of 'Beset'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Beset" Quotes from Famous Books

... sign was sufficient to chase away the imaginative notions that had beset Pen's awakening. His hand went at once to the water-bottle slung to his side, and, as he held the mouth to his comrade's lips and forgot the pain he suffered in his strained and stiffening joints, he ...

— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his perilled head in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read the great question of ...

— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... the Chisera. We should not have let them find us here; they will neglect their business with her to beset us with questions. ...

— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... legs over the bench and took up his brushes. In ten minutes the most fervent loyalist would have looked in vain for any resemblance, and with a sigh at the pitfalls which beset the artist he returned to his interrupted meal and hailed the ...

— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... beset with the perplexities this likeness had brought upon him. The chain which the goldsmith had given him was about his neck, and the goldsmith was reproaching him for denying that he had it, and refusing to pay for it, and Antipholus Was protesting that the goldsmith freely ...

— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

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