beg

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Definitions (26)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (8)

  1. transitive verb To ask for as charity: begged money while sitting in a doorway.
  2. transitive verb To ask earnestly for or of; entreat: begged me for help.
  3. transitive verb To evade; dodge: a speech that begged the real issues.
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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beg:   begged ·  begging ·  begs
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English beggen, possibly from Anglo-Norman begger, from Old French begart, lay brother, one who prays; see beggar.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English also begg, begge, from Middle English beggen, first found in the early part of the 13th century (in the “Ancren Riwle”); origin uncertain. Various explanations have been offered:(1) from Middle English bagge, a bag (because beggars carry bags: see first quotation under beggar, n.); but this is certainly wrong. It would imply the forms *beggen, *begge, as variants of baggen, bagge, but no such variants are found or are probable, and no such sense as ‘put into a bag,’ or ‘carry a bag,’ which might connect the notion of ‘bag’ with that of ‘beg,’ belongs to the Middle English verb baggen, which is found only in the sense of ‘swell out like a bag’; the sense of ‘put into a bag’ is modern, and that of ‘carry a bag’ does not exist; bagger, moreover, the supposed antecedent of beggar, is only modern. (2) from Anglo-Saxon bedecian, beg (connected with Goth, bidagwa, a beggar, apparently from bidjan = Anglo-Saxon biddan, English bid, ask; cf. Dutch bedelen = Old High German betalōn, Middle High German betelen, German bettelu, beg, freq. of Dutch biddan = German bitten = Anglo-Saxon biddan, English bid, ask); but the Anglo-Saxon bedecian occurs but once, in the 9th century, and there are no intermediate forms to connect it with Middle English beggen. (3) from Old Flemish *beggen, beg; but there is no such word. (4) from Old French beg-, the common radical of begard, begart, beguard, begar (Middle Latin begardus, beggardus, beghardus, etc.), and beguin (Middle Latin beginus, begginus, beghinus, beguinus, etc.), names given to the members of a mendicant lay brotherhood (see Beghard and Beguin); also applied to any begging friar or other beggar. Such mendicants were very numerous at the time of the first appearance of the English verb, and the derived Old French verb beguiner, beguigner (from beguin), with Anglo-French begger, is actually found in the sense of ‘beg.’ The English verb may be a back formation from the noun beggar (Middle English begger, beggere, beggar, beggare), which is, in this view, an adapted form (as if a noun of agent in -ar, -er) of the Old French begar, begard, etc., a Beghard. Beghard is otherwise not found in Middle English, though the precise form begger is found in Wyclif and later as a designation of the mendicant friars (Beghards), apparently without direct reference to their begging.
 

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/bɛg/
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