Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Third-person singular simple present indicative form of befall.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • In that way Lydgate put the question -- not quite in the way required by the awaiting answer; but such missing of the right word befalls many seekers.

    Middlemarch: a study of provincial life (1900) 1871

  • In that way Lydgate put the question -- not quite in the way required by the awaiting answer; but such missing of the right word befalls many seekers.

    Middlemarch 1871

  • In that way Lydgate put the question -- not quite in the way required by the awaiting answer; but such missing of the right word befalls many seekers.

    Middlemarch George Eliot 1849

  • It was rolled, watered and attended to with an assiduity such as befalls few spots of ground in the world.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 25, April, 1873 Various

  • His extraordinary freshness of spirit easily carried Arnold, Herbert Spencer, myself, and afterwards many others, high over an occasional crudity or haste in judgment such as befalls the best of us in ardent hours.

    Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie Carnegie, Andrew, 1835-1919 1920

  • His death, however, had not been like that of an ordinary man; it was not Namtaru, the spirit of fate, who had taken him, nor a misfortune such as befalls ordinary men, but

    The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Theophilus Goldridge Pinches 1895

  • Given health and strength, he might perhaps continue to hold his own in this merciless conflict; perhaps, only; but what if some accident, such as befalls this man or that in every moment of time, threw him among the weaklings?

    Will Warburton George Gissing 1880

  • Carmichael had a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as befalls emotional and ill-disciplined natures when they are disappointed and mortified.

    Rabbi Saunderson Ian Maclaren 1878

  • Carmichael had a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as befalls emotional and ill-disciplined natures when they are disappointed and mortified.

    Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers Ian Maclaren 1878

  • The negative side of the each of us being responsible for all that befalls us is that no one else has to take responsibility.

    You Are to Blame For All That Befalls You « Colleen Anderson 2009

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