Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Constantly troubling or attacking.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Habitually attacking or waylaying.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Habitually attacking, harassing, or pressing upon or about.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Present participle of
beset .
Etymologies
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Examples
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I know men who spend forty years fighting what they call their besetting sin, and on which they waste strength enough to evangelize the world.
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One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin.
Beautiful Thoughts Henry Drummond 1874
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One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin.
Natural Law in the Spiritual World Henry Drummond 1874
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This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period.
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This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period.
The Last of the Mohicans A Narrative of 1757 James Fenimore Cooper 1820
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This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period.
The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 James Fenimore Cooper 1820
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One becomes convinced that he never suffered any morbid, soul-shaking experience such as besetting religious doubt brings with it, or the pangs of despised love; that on the contrary he moved among men and women with a serene and godlike tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with mind and senses ever alert to every form of beauty.
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As in the case of every well-defined philosophy, this motive is always attended by a "besetting" problem.
The Approach to Philosophy Ralph Barton Perry 1916
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This may well be a kind of besetting sin -- a sin that has plagued him since his youth and one that has never lessened its pull on him.
Challies Dot Com 2008
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This may well be a kind of besetting sin -- a sin that has plagued him since his youth and one that has never lessened its pull on him.
Challies Dot Com 2008
martagreen commented on the word besetting
(adj): Constantly troubling or attacking.
March 16, 2009