Definitions

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

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

Etymologies

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Examples

  • An impertinent white newsboy occupies two seats at the end of the car and importunes you to the point of rage to buy cheap candy, Coco-Cola, and worthless, if not vulgar, books.

    DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

  • So here we have the government al ready paying for 65% of a project that doesn ' t even meet its normal cost-benefit test, and then the White House has to referee when one of the largest corporations in the world GE importunes the Administration to move faster by threatening to find a private financial substitute like any other business.

    Wind Jammers at the White House 2010

  • It was a bit like that gag when a beggar importunes Harpo Marx for the price of a cup of coffee, and Harpo reaches into his coat and produces a cup of coffee.

    It *is* heroin, right? amuchmoreexotic 2008

  • Still, in the pain of his illness, he finds a bright side, “whatever I had failed to do to make myself familiar with death and reconciled to it that illness will do for me: for the more closely it presses upon me and importunes me the less reason I shall have to be afraid to die.”

    On Gallstones and Doctors « So Many Books 2005

  • As a matter of religious observance, if a beggar importunes me directly, I must fork over some money.

    Freakonomics Quorum: The Economics of Street Charity - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com 2007

  • As a matter of religious observance, if a beggar importunes me directly, I must fork over some money.

    Freakonomics Quorum: The Economics of Street Charity - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com 2007

  • What the romantic in rags pines after like all tomtompions haunting crevices for a deadbeat escupement and what het importunes our Mitleid for in accornish with the Mortadarthella taradition is the poorest commonon-guardiant waste of time.

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • A scoundrel and a liar, now he importunes the very power drunk Congress he helped elect to protect journalists from the all powerful courts and a rampant US Government.

    The Chimes at Midnight 2005

  • This was the consideration that incessantly prompted, and still importunes me to run every risk of life and fortune, rather than leave my fame under such an ignominious aspersion.

    The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom 2004

  • So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access to you.

    As You Like It 2004

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