Befall
Pronunciation
- UK: IPA: /bɪˈfÉ”Ël/
- US: IPA: /bɪˈfɔl/, IPA: /bɪˈfɑl/
- Rhymes: -É”Ël
Origin
From Middle English befallen, from Old English befeallan ("to fall, deprive of, bereave of, fall to, be assigned to, befall"), equivalent to - + fall. Cognate with Dutch bevallen ("to please"), German befallen ("to befall, attack, overcome"), Swedish befalla ("to command, prescribe, direct").
Full definition of befall
Verb
- (intransitive) To happen.
- (transitive) To happen to.Temptation befell me.
- ShakespeareI beseech your grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me. - , 2013-04-15, Walter Russell Mead, The Wreck of the Euro, As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s.
Noun
befall
(plural befalls)- Case; instance; circumstance; event; incident; accident.
- 1495, William Caxton, Vitas Patrum:Or he had tolde al his befall.
- 1990, India. Parliament. House of the People, India. Parliament. Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha debates:This is proposed to be done by moving necessary amendment in this befall to the Finance Bill.
- 1994, Socialist Party (India), Janata: Volume 49:He said "I would advise people to cultivate frugal habits. I will not commit the crime of making them helpless by saying that they have no responsibility whatever in the befall of calamities like old age, illness, accident, etc. ..."
- 1996, Thomas Pfau, Rhonda Ray Kercsmar, Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in romanticism:..., the word "care" asserting itself subliminally in somewhat the same way that "fall" does in the "befall" of "Infant Joy."