besiege
verb
Simple meaning
To beset or surround with armed forces for the purpose of compelling to surrender, to lay siege to.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
bihseejSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
bɪˈsidʒ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitive
To beset or surround with armed forces for the purpose of compelling to surrender, to lay siege to, beleaguer.
To assail or ply, as with requests or demands.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To beset or surround with armed forces for the purpose of compelling to surrender, to lay siege to, beleaguer.
Used this way, besiege is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use besiege
- “The press photographers besieged the movie star.”verb
- “She was besieged by so many problems that she got discouraged.”verb
- “The Turks besieged Vienna.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to beset
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.