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Belegeren
- Beleaguer comes from the Dutch word belegeren.
www.merriam-webster.com › word-of-the-day › beleaguer-2021/12/13
Dec 29, 2016 · English speakers created beleaguer from the Dutch word belegeren in the 16th century. "[Military men] will not vouchsafe … to use our ancient terms belonging to matters of war, but do call a camp by the Dutch name," commented the English soldier and diplomat Sir John Smyth in 1590.
The earliest known use of the verb beleaguer is in the late 1500s. OED's earliest evidence for beleaguer is from around 1589, in the writing of Thomas Nashe, writer. beleaguer is a borrowing from Dutch.
In modern Dutch, leger means army and not camp (interesting semantic shift), but the meaning of belegeren has not changed.
- Etymology
- Pronunciation
- Verb
Borrowed from Dutch belegeren and/or Middle Low German belēgeren; equivalent to be- + lair. Compare also German belagern, Danish belejre. The English spelling was perhaps influenced by unrelated league.
(UK) IPA(key): /bɪˈliː.ɡə/, /bəˈliː.ɡə/(General American) IPA(key): /bɪˈli.ɡɚ/Rhymes: -iːɡə(ɹ)beleaguer (third-person singular simple present beleaguers, present participle beleaguering, simple past and past participle beleaguered) 1. To besiege; to surround with troops. 1.1. 1838 October, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Beleaguered City”, in Voices of the Night, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1839, →OCLC, stanzas 1–2, page 22:...
Oct 7, 2022 · A word from the Flemish Wars (cognates: Swedish belägra, Dutch belegeren "besiege," German Belagerung "siege"). The spelling influenced by unrelated league. Related: Beleaguered; beleaguering.
The Dutch word belegeren is made up of be- “around” + leger “camp” + a verbal ending. The Proto-Indo-European root ambi “around, both (sides),” as in ambidextrous and amphibian, was reduced in the Germanic languages to be- in English and Dutch and um “around, about” in German.
The verb 'beleaguer' has an interesting etymology that traces back to the Dutch word 'belegeren,' which is a combination of 'be-' meaning 'around' and 'legeren' meaning 'to camp' or 'to station.' This Dutch term was adopted into English in the late 16th century.
