BESEECH • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Beseech

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/bisˈitʃ/ Listen

verb

Beseech v. t. (past & past part. besought; pres. part. beseeching)

1.

To ask or entreat with urgency; to supplicate; to implore. "I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts." "But Eve... besought his peace."

Synonyms: To beg; to crave. To Beseech, Entreat, Solicit, Implore, Supplicate. These words agree in marking that sense of want which leads men to beg some favor. To solicit is to make a request, with some degree of earnestness and repetition, of one whom we address as a superior. To entreat implies greater urgency, usually enforced by adducing reasons or arguments. To beseech is still stronger, and belongs rather to the language of poetry and imagination. To implore denotes increased fervor of entreaty, as addressed either to equals or superiors. To supplicate expresses the extreme of entreaty, and usually implies a state of deep humiliation. Thus, a captive supplicates a conqueror to spare his life. Men solicit by virtue of their interest with another; they entreat in the use of reasoning and strong representations; they beseech with importunate earnestness; they implore from a sense of overwhelming distress; they supplicate with a feeling of the most absolute inferiority and dependence.

noun

Beseech n. Solicitation; supplication. (Obs. or Poetic)

See images of 'Beseech'

Etymology of 'Beseech'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Beseech" Quotes from Famous Books

... say—having determined, from the beginning, to give no hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of the slightest consequence. Guilty she was pronounced: but sentence at that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the muff or other circumstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These circumstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: ...

— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... wasn't enough to keep me running from room to room (as if I were the guide on a 'personally conducted'), what did she do but discover a white satin evening gown that I hadn't worn for years, and beseech me to put it on. And I did put it on—why, I can't imagine, only that I found myself utterly helpless in ...

— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... this all his knights and lords assembled them afore him, and said: Blessed be God, your war is finished and your conquest achieved, in so much that we know none so great nor mighty that dare make war against you: wherefore we beseech you to return homeward, and give us licence to go home to our wives, from whom we have been long, and to rest us, for your journey is finished with honour and worship. Then said the king, Ye say truth, and for ...

— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... which to beseech God's pardon. For a long time my course was a course of vanity. I have been a seafaring man, a soldier, and a courtier; and, in the temptations of the least of these there is enough to overthrow a good mind and a good man. I die in the faith ...

— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... should escape without a "twinge of the soul," his friend will be most happily deceived; but, he continues, "if you shall, as I expect you will at some time, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some reason to speak with judgment on the subject, beseech you to ascribe it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous suggestion of the devil." This forms the prelude to an ingenious and affectionate argument in which he labors to convince ...

— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

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