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Belegeren
- Beleaguer comes from the Dutch word belegeren.
www.merriam-webster.com › word-of-the-day › beleaguer-2021/12/13
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.
Oct 7, 2022 · "besiege, surround, blockade," literal and figurative, from Dutch or Low German belegeren… See origin and meaning of beleaguer.
Beleaguer comes from the Dutch word belegeren. Leger means "camp" and the prefix be- means "about" or "around." Belegeren, by definition, is a neutral verb ("to camp around"); however, beleaguer implies trouble. It is also synonymous with besiege.
- 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:...
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.
In modern Dutch, leger means army and not camp (interesting semantic shift), but the meaning of belegeren has not changed.
Beleaguer - To surround, besiege, or harass a person, place, or group persistently, typically with the intention of causing distress, exhaustion, or disruption.
