befall

Etymology

From Middle English befallen, from Old English befeallan, from Proto-Germanic *bifallaną. Equivalent to be- +‎ fall.

Pronunciation

• (UK): IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɔːl/
• (US): IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɔl/, IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɑl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːl

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To fall upon; fall all over; overtake

   At dusk an unusual calm befalls the wetlands.

2. (intransitive) To happen.
3. (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”, in The American Interest‎, retrieved 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.

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

Anagrams

• flabel

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bəˈfal/
• Hyphenation: be‧fall
• Rhymes: -al

Verb

befall

1. Imperative singular of befallen.

Verb

befall

1. imperative of befalla.