Citations:worst

	1485
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1485 – Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur, Book X, Chapter lvii, leaf 256r

  Ye saye wel said sir Tristram and wete ye wel that I am sire Tristram de lyones and now doo your werste.

  "Ye say well, said Sir Tristram, and wit ye well that I am Sir Tristram de Liones, and now do your worst."

English citations of worst

					1843	1942
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1. (English verb)
   • to defeat, to get the better of
     • 1942: He was a great man wholly worsted by his age. — Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Canongate 2006, p. 145)
     • some thrice-renowned Earl of Leicester, not of the De Montfort breed, (...) had quarreled with his sovereign, Henry Second of the name; had been worsted, it is like, and maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts

       1843 Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 2, Landlord Edmund