Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
- v. To solicit for sex.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To come side by side or face to face with; draw near; approach; make up to.
- To speak to; address.
- To border on; adjoin.
- To adjoin; be adjacent.
- n. The act of accosting; address; salutation.
Wiktionary
- v. To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
- v. To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.
- v. To approach; to make up to
- v. To speak to first; to address; to greet.
- v. To adjoin; to lie alongside
- n. Address; greeting.
- v. To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
- v. To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.
- v. To approach; to make up to
- v. To speak to first; to address; to greet.
- v. To adjoin; to lie alongside
- n. Address; greeting.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.
- v. To approach; to make up to.
- v. To speak to first; to address; to greet.
- v. To adjoin; to lie alongside.
- n. Address; greeting.
WordNet 3.0
- v. approach with an offer of sexual favors
- v. speak to someone
Etymologies
- French accoster, from Old French, from Medieval Latin accostāre, to adjoin : Latin ad-, ad- + Latin costa, side; see kost- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“You mistake, knight; 'accost' is front her, board her, woo her, assail her.”
“BTW, the first two definitions of 'accost' from dictionary. com:”
“They saw him slouch for'ard after breakfast, and, like a mendicant, with outstretched palm, accost a sailor.”
“We also spotted a SUSPICIOUSLY PALE young lady applying for employment, but she MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED before we could accost her!”
Stuff We Did On Our Vacation, Part One; Or, A Pictorial Essay on Vampire Habitats
“Sorry to accost you, but there's something I felt I should tell you, she said, with a concerned expression.”
“Characterizing Jews as cerebral nomads, submissive and victimized by nature, he almost seems to hate and accost them as a means to elicit their retaliation.”
“But I would daresay that most of us would not go accost a stranger at a party or even someone who knows us well with endless accounts of our kids stories (a blog doesnt count cause you dont have to read it) without so much as a ‘So whats going on in your life?’. toyfoto Said,”
“Well, actually, I chose not to accost people during their dinner, but I did end up asking about 300 people both inside education and outside education what they thought the purpose of public education was.”
The Huffington Post: Heather Wolpert-Gawron: What Is the Purpose of Public Education?
“I accost strangers on airplanes to show them how dandy it is to load thousands of pages including this newspaper onto something the size of a shirt cardboard.”
The Wall Street Journal: The Joy of Reading 'Pinocchio'—On Paper
“Use private security goons to accost students (who were not, as predicted, permitted to speak);”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘accost’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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3/4 year Vocab List
garbled, verbose, behoove, runt, douse, stipulate, condolence, incongruous, mundane, euphemism, brusque, labyrinth and 96 more...
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3/4 year Vocab List
lackluster, reprimand, loathe, abhor, willful, ample, tremulous, ominous, subtle, rescind, redundant, pretentious and 96 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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haltertop's list
my favorite words!!
debacle, vernacular, aleatory, accost, glean, sesquipedalian
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Vocab #5
wary, entice, façade, expedite, splice, reticent, accost, intrepid, throng, laconic

ramyeon Good Mistress Mary Accost. Dec 5, 2010