befall

See also Befall

English

Etymology

From Middle English befallen, from Old English befeallan (“to fall, deprive of, bereave of, fall to, be assigned to, befall”), equivalent to be- +‎ fall. Cognate with Dutch bevallen (“to please”), German befallen (“to befall, attack, overcome”), Swedish befalla (“to command, prescribe, direct”).

Pronunciation

• (UK): IPA: /bɪˈfɔːl/, X-SAMPA: /bI"fO:l/
• (US): enPR: bĭ-fälʹ, IPA: /bɪˈfɑl/, X-SAMPA: /bI"fAl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

  Rhymes: -ɔːl

Verb

befall (third-person singular simple present befalls, present participle befalling, simple past befell, past participle befallen)

1. (intransitive) To happen.
2. (transitive) To happen to.

   Temptation befell me.

   • Shakespeare

     I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me.

   • 2013 April 15, Walter Russell Mead, “The Wreck of the Euro”, The American Interest, accessed on 2013-04-16:

     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.

Translations

happen to

• Bulgarian: случвам се, сполитам
• Dutch: overkomen (nl)

• Indonesian: terjadi pada (id)
• Latin: accido (la), incido (la), cado (la)

Derived terms

• befalling
• misbefall

Noun

befall (plural befalls)

1. 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."

References

• befall in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• befall in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

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Swedish

Verb

befall

1. imperative of befalla.