IMPORTUNE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Importune

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verb

Importune v. t. (past & past part. importuned; pres. part. importuning)

To request or solicit, with urgency; to press with frequent, unreasonable, or troublesome application or pertinacity; hence, to tease; to irritate; to worry. "Their ministers and residents here have perpetually importuned the court with unreasonable demands."

To import; to signify. (Obs.) "It importunes death."

Importune v. i. To require; to demand. (Obs.) "We shall write to you, As time and our concernings shall importune."

adjective

Importune adj.

Inopportune; unseasonable. (Obs.)

Troublesome; vexatious; persistent; urgent; hence, vexatious on account of untimely urgency or pertinacious solicitation. (Obs.) "And their importune fates all satisfied." "Of all other affections it (envy) is the most importune and continual."

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Etymology of 'Importune'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Importune" Quotes from Famous Books

... two more days. Madam, you need not fear. I shall not importune you. I give you those two days for reflection. Unless I hear from you I ...

— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... general, touching the affection of envy; that of all other affections it is the most importune and continual. For of other affections there is occasion given but now and then; and therefore it was well said, Invidia festos dies non agit:[46] a for it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted that love and envy ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... remained the avowed object of her utter antipathy even after the death of Leicester, and in spite of all the intercessions in her behalf with which her son Essex, in the meridian of his favor, never ceased to importune his sovereign. ...

— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... determination, ruthlessness were eloquent in his countenance; I felt like a child before such a combination of qualities. Then he began to talk. He has an air, that brigand; he can cock his head so as to deceive a bailiff; he can wear a certain nobility of countenance; and with it all he can importune like a beggar. He has a horrid and plausible fluency; he is deaf to denials; he drugs you with words and robs you before you recover consciousness. He had got the length of quoting my own verses to me, and I felt myself going, when deliverance arrived. A stout man paused on the ...

— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... death! No sooner had the victim formed a kind thought of me, than the poisoned cup, the axe and block, the dagger, the mine, were ready to punish them for casting away affection on such a wretch as I am!—Importune me not—I will fly no farther—I can die but once, and I ...

— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

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