Antiacademy - English Dictionary

By Estefano Lujan

The only English dictionary, intended as a lexicographical revolution. 2016 edition, reviewed by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Estefano Lujan
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533709479

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Beguile

Verb.

Pronunciation and accent: bIgaIl.

Etymology: it is analysable into be- (intensive prefix) + guile (= deceit).

Preterite tense: beguiled.

Preterite participle: beguiled.

Present participle: beguiling.

Transitively:

First definition: to make (someone) the object of a guile; to cause (a person) to believe what is false, by means of words or otherwise.

Synonyms: to delude, deceive, cheat, impose on, trick.

It may be translated by ingannare, in Italian; engañar, in Spanish; tromper, in French.

[...] every day he greeted her with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk.

Mary Braddon... Charlotte's Inheritance

[...]  the wicked chief was enamoured of my mistress, and, I doubt not, beguiled her with feigned tales, saying that Queen Zalia was near her end.

Sara Coleridge... Phantasmion

The French emperor supposing that they merely wished to lull him into a false security, beguiled them with artful compliments.

Samuel Maunder... The Treasury of History

Second definition: to induce (any one) to do something, by guile.

***With an infinitive, to signify the action to which the deluded is induced:

[...] this is not a spot to be alone with a youth of this graceless fellow's nature ; even though he may have beguiled you to love him dearly.

Pierce Egan... Paul Jones

I have two — nay, three good reasons for going : first, that a beautiful young lady has already beguiled me to stay longer than I should; secondly, that a pleasant old gentleman might beguile me to stay still longer.

George Payne... Leonora d'Orco

"In olden and ancient times the Laird of Clyth went over to Denmark, and, being at the court of Elsineur, counterfeited, by the help of a handsome person, and a fine elocution, the style and renown of the most prosperous gentleman in all Caithness, by which he beguiled a Prince of Copenhagen to give him his daughter in marriage.

John Galt... The Entail

***With the preposition into, followed by a noun or gerund, to signify the action, state or condition caused by means of a trick:

[...] you must not beguile me into neglecting my duties.

Jane Mackenzie... Private Life

[The counsellor] was trying to beguile her into criminating herself, for the sake of employing her evidence against the luckless admiral.

Agnes Strickland... Queens of England

[...] his voice grew really kind, for he wished to beguile her into good-humour, and he mumbled the last words with his lips touching her cheek.

John Banim... The Denounced

I beguiled her into talk.

Elizabeth Gaskell... The accursed race

[I] first beguiled her into mounting her pony one beautiful morning, to ride over the fields with Gerald, Miss Peterson, and me by her side.

Sarah Ellis... Pictures...

***With the prepositions to or into, followed by the noun of the place where someone is enticed:

From the dance, he beguiled her to the garden, and she was pleased to be so beguiled.

William Simms... Katharine Walton

Helen did not suspect the secret purpose for which Mr. Mortimer had beguiled her to the Rectory.

Jane Mackenzie... Private Life

It was into the reticulations of one of these nets that our talkative guide beguiled us.

Joseph Bullar... A Winter in the Azores

Third definition: to dispossess (someone) of something by guile or by means of a trick. 

Synonyms: bereave, deprive, cheat out of

***With of or out of, followed by the noun of the thing trickily obtained:

[...] the plan of beguiling him of his money.

Mary Griffith... Camperdown

[...] the woman was exceeding angry, because the Fryer had subtilly beguiled her of her meat.

The Monthly Mirror, vol. 16

Supposing, very honestly, that a soldier was a likely person to inform him where he could most advantageously procure the article, he accosted one in the street, who conducted him to his own quarters, and there, having beguiled him out of five dollars on pretence of selling him a gun and equipments, set up a hue and cry, that there was a rebel purchasing king's arms of a king's soldier.

Caleb Snow... A History of Boston

***Hence, metaphorically: to induce (someone) to something by means of a trick, as if by cheating out of it:

[...] Evelyn has linked herself to me, insensibly beguiled me of my love, and made me forget my own desolateness.

Anna Mowatt... Evelyn

[...] we should rejoice if we could even beguile them of a smile.

Edward Hook... Cousin Geoffrey

How often on summer evenings, when he lay sick in the little chamber of the woodland grange, had she unclosed the casement to admit the fragrant breeze, and bid him listen to the vespers of the birds, and playfully endeavoured to beguile him of a smile, by imitating with her sweet voice their mellow notes behind his curtain.

The Lady's magazine

Fourth definition: to cause (somebody) to be heedless of something unpleasant or unsuitable, by means of a trick

Synonym: to divert

***With the preposition from, or of, followed by a noun, to signify diversion from something unpleasant:

Though I had long won these facts from Billy, I had never known him to play his game so openly before. But when I mentioned the thing to Solon, thinking to beguile him from his trouble, I found him more interested than I had thought he could be; for Solon knew Billy as well as I did.

Harry Wilson... The Boss of Little Arcady

Betha beguiled him from his usual sad pensiveness, to take an interest in the various employments exhibited in rural life.

Jane Porter, Anna Maria Porter... Coming out

I sat and listened as long as I could to the efforts my companion made to beguile me of my uneasiness.

Mrs. Farren... Boston Common

[The buzzard hawks] never could be approached within reach of a gun, or induced into a trap [...]. To beguile them of their suspicions, I used to leave the most tempting baits about the woods and fields, to try to get them to take a dead quarry, and disabuse them of suspicion.

John Carleton... The Sporting review

Still her child beguiled her of her grief.

Godey's Magazine, Volume 12

He had, originally, purposed visiting Mr. Tyrold before he set out, and conversing with him upon the state of danger in which he thought his daughter; but his tenderness for her feelings, during his last adieu, had beguiled him of this plan, lest it should prove painful, injurious, or inauspicious to her own views or designs in breaking to her friends their breach.

Fanny Burney... Camilla

––––––––

Fifth definition: to cause (someone) not to be bored, by means of a funny trick. Hence, (metaphorically) to cause (something) not to be tedious, as if by a trick

Synonyms: to while away, amuse

The long train was slackening speed and two whistles rang shrilly through the roar of wheels when Miss Barrington laid down the book with which she had beguiled her journey of fifteen hundred miles, and rose from her seat in a corner of the big first-class car.

Harold Bindloss... Winston of the Prairie

Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been [...] by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour.

Thomas Hardy... Far from the Madding Crowd...

We got under way with, and for many days, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.

Edgar Poe

Intransitively: to practice a beguilement; use a wile

Words derived from guile: beguilement, beguiler, beguiling, beguilingly, beguileful, beguiled, guileful, guilefully, guilefulness, guileless, guilelessly, guilessness, unguileful,

_behove_ or _behoove_

Verb.

Pronunciation and accent: bIhəUv (or bIhu;v)

Etymology: from Old English behofian (= to need), derived of behof (= behoof). Literally: ‘to be of behoof or use.’

Third-person singular simple present: she/he behoves (behooves).

Preterite tense, preterite participle: behoved (behooved).

Present participle: behoving (behooving).

Transitively: 1. To be in want of; to have need of (something);—it is obsolete.

2. (The subject being a clause; and the object, a person or another animal) to be on behoof of (some one); to be for the behoof of; to be advantageous, or profitable for (some one). Hence, to be necessary or advisable, as being profitable.

Postdefinition: the impersonal pronoun it is used as a anticipatory subject of the clause, and pursuantly to this practice, the construction becomes quasi-impersonal.

Translation: il faut (faire quelque chose), car il est profitable, in French; yo tengo (tú tienes, ella tiene, etc.) que hacer cierta cosa, porque es provechosa, in Spanish; io ho (tu hai, etc.) da fare (qualcosa), per essere utile, in Italian.

Synthetic antonym: it is shunnable (to do).

In places the slope was almost precipitous, and it behooved him to be careful of the horses, which could not be replaced.

Harold Bindloss... Winston of the Prairie

[...] as Endicott glanced right and left along the front, he discovered a personage at some little distance with whom it behooved him to hold a parley.

Nathaniel Hawthorne... from Twice Told Tales

Our debts, I grant, are very great, and therefore it the more behoves you, as a young man of principle and honour, to pay them off as speedily as possible.

Charles Dickens... Barnaby Rudge

[...] the herd is heading a little this-a-way, and it behoves us to make ready for their visit.

J. Fenimore Cooper... The Prairie

I tell thee, lady, it behooves me much to know this secret.

William Simms... Southward Ho

[...] the harshness, and selfishness of my nature, my vanity, [...] my pride and ambition, were for a time concealed from him whom it most behooved to know them.

Mary Sherwood... The lady of the manor

It was a circumstance [...] unusual in such a place and hour; and, in our situation, it behoved us to proceed with some timidity.

Robert Stevenson... The Master of Ballantrae

[...] Sandy would not leave the horses till they were carefully rubbed down, blanketed, and fed, for he was entered for the four- horse race and it behoved him to do his best to win.

Ralph Connor... Black Rock

These may be deemed the chief principles of the art of painting, which it behoves the student indispensably to acquire not only the knowledge but likewise the practice of.

Dictionary of the fine arts

*The subject may be a noun, but this construction is rare:

Nothing behooves a business or professional man, and especially a physician, more than discretion.

Jeffrey Marshall... The inquest

Believing that nothing behooves democracy more than debate, we propose construction of a museum of bioprospecting, intellectual property, and the public domain as a vehicle for agreement and disagreement over the legitimacy, merit, and correctness of governmental decisions on bioprospecting, intellectual property, and the public domain.

Joseph Vogel... The Museum of Bioprospecting...

**The subject may be a clause introduced by the conjunction that:

[...] it behoveth us that we arm ourselves, and demand of the Infantes what they have done with our ladies.

Robert Southey... Chronicle of the Cid

***The personal object may be omitted:

In those days arose Rodrigo of Bivar. who was a youth strong in arms and of good customs; and the people rejoiced in him, for he bestirred himself to protect the land from the Moors. Now it behoves that ye should know whence he came, and from what men he was descended, because we have to proceed with his history.

Robert Southey... Chronicle of the Cid

It behoves that these stories be written in letters of liquid gold.

Richard Burton... Thousand Nights and a Night

As the security of the community depended on the security of the seigneur, it behoved that his residence should be made inexpugnable.

Sabine Baring-Gould... Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe

3. (The subject is a person) to be in duty (to do something reputed as useful);—used only in Scotland

So that I behooved to come by some clothes of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter’s side, and put my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.

Robert Stevenson... Catriona

Other English words derived from behoof: unbehoving, behoveful, behooveful, behoving.

_beset_

Verb.

Pronunciation and accent: bɪˈsɛt.

Etymology: from Old English besettan, analysed into be- (prefix for around, on all sides) + settan (= to set).

Preterite tense: beset. Preterite participle: beset. present participle: beseting.

1. To set (a thing) about with ornaments; to surround with accessories;—it is rarely found and only in preterite participle.

Synonym: to stud.

Translation: entourer, in French; rodear, in Spanish; circondare, in Italian. 

Though his cloaths were exceeding costly, and beset with jewels and precious stones, yet he is said never to have worn one suit twice, nor ever put on again a ring which he had once used.

The Historical Magazine, vol. 2

––––––––

He had on a gold crown, and a gold-flowered gown, richly beset with jewels.

The New Monthly Magazine

2. (The subject being plural: besetters) to set upon (a person or another animal) on all sides.

Synonyms: to assail by stationing themselves round; to surround hostilely or annoyingly.

He broke through the band by whom he was beset, slaying two, and wounding several, and escaped safe to his Castle of Crichton.

Walter Scott... Essay on Border Antiquities

Constantly, on our way, we were beset by men, who wanted to guide us and act as intermediaries in trade.

Thomas Knox... The oriental world

*Metaphorically: the subject being something incorporeal:

When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him.

Edgar Poe

[...] something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes.

Charlotte Bronte... Jane Eyre

[...] she had not a particle of the pride that beset her mother.

William Ainsworth... Mervyn Clitheroe

In that pretty room she made a charming picture, which for a moment almost made me forget the manifold dangers besetting me.

Valentine Williams... The Man with the Clubfoot

But the subject is beset with difficulties which, in our present ignorance respecting the ancient local charters of Spain, can never be removed.

Samuel Dunham... Europe During the Middle Ages

[...] the ice formed rapidly on the deck, and covered the rigging, so much as to render it difficult to work either the brig or schooner; dangers beset us in every direction.

Charles Wilkes... Narrative of the United States

Even by daylight our way was beset by difficulties.

Captain Hamilton... Men and manners in America, vol. II

3. (The subject being plural: besetters) to lay siege to (a public place); surround (a town) with armed forces in order to capture it, or so as to compel surrender.

Synonyms: to besiege, beleaguer.

[...] this rude host of natives of the mountains and the woods appeared in the vicinity of Dumbarton, besetting the town.

John Glen... History of the Town and Castle of Dumbarton

4. To occupy or block (a road, gate, or passage), so as to prevent any one from passing, or so as to surprise him.

Two months afterwards, they beset her house with a guard, to prevent her from receiving any succour from friends or servants.

Robert Chambers... Domestic annals

[...] the soldiers having beset all the ways so that no person could pass without much peril.

John Clayton... Personal memoirs of Charles

I am but one man, and we must pass through these mountains that are beset with enemies.

Anna Bray... The Talba

[...] a land thickly beset with treacherous, lurking foes and armed bands of outlying savages.

Isaac Scribner... Laconia

Almost immediately after this victory, Don Lorenzo received notice that the fort of Anchediva was beset by 60 vessels belonging to the Moors and Malabars, well armed and manned with a number of resolute men under the command of a renegado.

Robert Kerr... Voyages and Travels, Volume VI

5. (The subject being plural, but impersonal) to surround annoyingly (something or someone); to stand, lie, or be situated dangerously around.

The African coast from Morocco to the Senegal is singularly perilous, beset with numerous sandbanks, and without either port or shelter.

Robert Jameson... Narrative of... Africa

His ship, beset by ice, and sorely wounded, remained fixed and immovable for two years.

Willis Abbot... American Merchant Ships and Sailors

Words derived from beset: besetment, besetter, besetting.

_bestride_

Verb

Pronunciation and accent: bIstraId

Third-person singular simple present: she/he bestrides

Preterite tense, bestrode (or, rarely, bestrid)

Preterite participle: bestridden (or, rarely, bestrid, bestrode)

Present participle: bestriding.

Etymology: from Old English bestrīden, from be- + strīden (= to stride)

Transitively:

First definition: to sit upon (an animated being) with the legs astride; to sit astride of (something)

Synonyms: to stride, straddle, overstride

Translation:ahorcajarse sobre (alguien, algo), in Spanish; s’asseoir à califourchon sur (une chose, quelqu’un), enfourcher (un cheval), in French; inforcare, in Italian.

[...] he bestrode a goodly steed, well conditioned and well caparisoned, while his companion rode beside him upon a humble hack, poorly accoutred, and, as he rode, he scarcely raised his eyes from the ground, but maintained a meek and lowly air.

Washington Irving (Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada)

Full twenty times, the rioters, headed by one man who wielded an axe in his right hand, and bestrode a brewer's horse of great size and strength, caparisoned with fetters taken out of Newgate, which clanked and jingled as he went, made an attempt to force a passage at this point, and fire the vintner's house.

Charles Dickens (Barnaby Rudge)

The young Pawnee, who had awaited the termination of the incomprehensible discussion, with grave and characteristic patience, raised his head, and listened to the unknown cry, like a stag, whose mysterious faculties had detected the footsteps of the distant hounds in the gale. The trapper and the Doctor were not, however, entirely so uninstructed as to the nature of the extraordinary sounds. The latter recognised in them the well-known voice of his own beast, and he was about to rush up the little bank, which confined the current, with all the longings of strong affection, when Asinus himself galloped into view, at no great distance, urged to the unnatural gait by the impatient and brutal Weucha, who bestrode him.

J. Fenimore Cooper (The Prairie)

He was an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him, a savage figure.

Max Brand (Riders of the Silences)

[Frederick] was never to be seen beyond the limits of his own domain, and, in this wide and social world, was utterly companionless - unless, indeed, that unnatural, impetuous, and fiery-colored horse, which he henceforward continually bestrode, had any mysterious right to the title of his friend.

Edgar Allan Poe

Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen, with that old salt in the midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an oil- barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines [...].

Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Village Uncle)

[...] a piece of timber which I bestrided, and the waves tossed me to and fro till they cast me upon an island coast, a high land and an uninhabited.

Richard F. Burton (The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night)

He bestrode the neck of Koorookh and sat with dangling feet, till she cried, 'Rise!' and the bird spread its wings and flapped them wide, rising high in the silver rays, and flying rapidly forward with the three on him from the mountain in front of Aklis, and the white sea with its enchanted isles and wonders; flying and soaring till the earth was as what might be held in the hollow of the hand [...]

George Meredith (The Shaving of Shagpat)

***Metaphorically: (the subject being an unanimated being) to be upon (something) with its extensions as if astride

[Michael] turned upon him a countenance somewhat flushed, [...], and bestridden by the spectacles.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne (The Wrong Box)

Second definition: to stand over (a place) with the legs astride; to stand astride of.

Synonyms: to stride, straddle, bestraddle

[...] on a sudden, recollection presented me with your formidable image, bestriding the ground over which I was travelling pretty much at my ease.

Jeremy Bentham (Defence of usury)

Third definition: to stand over (an animated being) with the legs astride, in the manner of a vanquisher over a vanquished.

Postdefinition: rare acceptation

Fourth definition: to stride (a street, etc.); this is, to walk with strides or long steps

Postdefinition: rare acceptation

Moll is shown ordering breeches from a tailor, sending for drink and tobacco, conversing on terms of easy familiarity [...], bestriding the streets of London in her transvestite costume [...]

Linda Woodbridge (Women and the English Renaissance)

A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride the house every evening with an immense pair of jack-boots

Washington Irving (Oliver Goldsmith)

Other English vocables derived from bestride: bestrider, bestriding

Other English vocables linked to the etymology of bestride: astride, stride (noun, verb), strider, striding, stridingly, outstride, overstride

_blame_

Verb.

Pronunciation: bleɪm.

Etymology: from Old French blasmer (= blame), from Latin blasphemare (= to blaspheme), from Greek blasphemein (= to speak ill of, blaspheme), from blasphemos (= evil-speaking), from blas- + -phemos, from phanai to say. The Italian biasimare, and the French blâmer are from the same origin.

Preterite tense: blamed (pronunciation: bleɪmd).

Preterite participle: blamed.

Present participle: blaming.

Transitively: 1. To express blame or disapprobation of (an action, a person for his action or for his fault).

Synonyms: to censure, reproach.

Antonyms: to praise, laud, extol, commend, eulogize, magnify.

Translation: blâmer, in French; reprochar, in Spanish; biasimare, in Italian.

They wondered at my temerity, and probably blamed it; but there was no time for discussion, and we separated.

Frances Burney... The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay

Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the King.

Thomas Macaulay... Critical and Historical Essays

*With the preposition for, followed by its object (a noun, or a gerund), by which the cause of disapprobation designated:

I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion.

Edgar Poe

So he rode slowly and thought of many things he might have done which would have been better than what he did do; and wondered what the girl thought about it and if she blamed him for not doing something