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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.

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Etymology of 'Beset'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Beset" Quotes from Famous Books

... passengers on board the "Oceana," on the night of the 20th of December, were totally ignorant of the real nature of the perils that beset them, although, as I said, an undefined misgiving and a sense of ...

— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... tempered by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France; and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she avoided him, or even that she was a shade less glad to see him; but she was beset by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily ...

— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... Labici in the year 336—an instance, which will certainly not be reckoned (by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the class of traditions that are trustworthy in their historical details, and which is beset by other very serious difficulties (see book ii. ch. 5, note). It is no doubt true that in the non-colonial assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (-adsignatio viritana-) sometimes only a few -jugera- were ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... from a previous example, the tendency of the sea-sand to absorb and conceal a sunken vessel is one of those difficulties that beset the explorer. But for that the recovery of treasure would be more frequent, the profession or business more lucrative. The number of vessels sunk annually, we learn from Lloyd's statistics, is one hundred thousand tons to the English commercial marine; and ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... mechanical skill of the diligent artist is discernible, labouring incessantly without extraordinary or transcendental light to the appointed end, the goal accomplished. It should be understood that as spiritual Art of its own property and nature is beset, environed on all impinging sides with a multifold range, a series of difficult corners around which the sense cannot immediately travel, but would for the fructification or sustentation's sake of its etherealism, a process of counter argument may deduce ...

— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater

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