accost
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle French accoster, acoster, from Old French acoster (“to stand beside”) (whence Medieval Latin accostare), from Old French a- + coste (“side, flank”).
Inflected forms:
form: accosts
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: accosting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: accosted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: accosted
pos: verb
tags: past
form: accosts
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: A beggar accosted me as soon as I stepped outside.
gloss: To join side to side; to border.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
gloss: To sail along the coast or side of.
pos: verb
tags: broadly
obsolete
transitive
gloss: To approach; to come up to.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: You mistake, knight. ‘Accost’ is front / her, board her, woo her, assail her.
gloss: To speak to first; to address; to greet.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Him, Satan thus accosts.
She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request—"She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink."
I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly.
gloss: To adjoin; to lie alongside.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: For all the Shores, which to the Sea accost
Lapland hath since been often surrounded (so much as accosts the sea) by the English.
gloss: To assault.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The Missouri prosecutors' case against Clemons, based partly on incriminating testimony given by his co-defendants, was that Clemons was part of a group of four youths who accosted the sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge one dark night in April 1991.
Surveillance video of the incident shows the man and woman being accosted by a man armed with and assault-style handgun.
gloss: To solicit sexually.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Gladstone's initial tone of disinterested philanthropy also characterized his first encounters with prostitutes in London once he has moved there to undertake his parliamentary duties. Accosted in a London park in 1837 by two women, Gladstone merely reported of them that "both ... had taken to their miserable calling from losing their livelihood by the death of their husbands."
gloss: Address; greeting.
pos: noun
tags: rare
examples: A man does not seize a woman by the sleeve and ask, "Is it you?" without some reason for an address so destitute of ordinary courtesy; and Lucilla was sufficiently versed in such matters to know that so rude and startling an accost could be only addressed to some one whose presence set the speaker's heart beating, and quickened the blood in his veins.
Anne liked to accost foreigners in their own tongue , but , being ignorant of Spanish , asked M. de Grignaux to teach her a sentence of polite accost in his own language, wherewith to welcome an ambassador from Spain.
Great was my amazement to find the unconquerable Mr. Sim thaw immediately on the accost of this strange gentleman, who hailed him with a ready familiarity, proceeded at once to discuss with him the trade of droving and the prices of cattle, and did not disdain to take a pinch from the inevitable ram's horn.
gloss: An attack.
pos: noun
examples: At last, when I was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thought of such an accost.
Synonyms: waylay
Derived words: accostable
accostment
Translations: