besiege
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to surround (a fortified area, esp a city) with military forces to bring about its surrender
-
to crowd round; hem in
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to overwhelm, as with requests or queries
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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besiegesimple
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besiegessimple
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have besiegedperfect
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has besiegedperfect
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am besiegingprogressive
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are besiegingprogressive
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is besiegingprogressive
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have been besiegingperfect progressive
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has been besiegingperfect progressive
Past
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besiegedsimple
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had besiegedperfect
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was besiegingprogressive
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were besiegingprogressive
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had been besiegingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of besiege
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English bysegen; see be-, siege
Explanation
To besiege means to attack with an army, or to pester with many requests. When all your teachers ask you to hand in assignments on the same day, you can end up feeling besieged. The source of the word besiege in its military sense is the Latin word for "seat." When an army settles down in front of a fort or other site of attack, they are besieging it or taking a seat there. Picture them continually bombarding the fortress with arrows and cannon shot, and you've got the picture of the figurative sense of the word, "to pester with requests, etc." If you get a lot of spam in your e-mail, you are besieged with advertisements — and maybe also besieged with worries that you'll get a virus!
Vocabulary lists containing besiege
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Grade 9, List 1
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
One scene that stuck with me: As Union troops besiege Atlanta, shells are exploding, people flee in panic.
From Salon ● Mar. 29, 2025
The feeling of being in a great city as raging infernos besiege it but don’t quite subsume it?
From Slate ● Jan. 9, 2025
His misdeeds follow him to a Passover Seder, where he reads the story of the plagues that besiege the Egyptians, who have enslaved the Jewish people.
From New York Times ● Dec. 16, 2022
That decision to besiege rather than directly attack the giant Azovstal plant means that “many Russian units remain fixed in the city and cannot be redeployed,” the British assessment said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2022
Adah the Poor Thing, hemiplegious egregious besiege us.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
While stifling heat besieges the nation this weekend from the desert Southwest to the Northeast, coastal Californians can’t afford to be smug.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2022
In “The Shadow of the Vulture” Suleyman the Magnificent besieges Vienna, whose two champions are the carousing ex-knight Gottfried von Kalmbach and the indomitable woman-warrior known as Red Sonya.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 9, 2021
Widowhood besieges her, and “in the siege she has lost everything.”
From New York Times ● Jun. 9, 2020
Ebola’s embers still glow in West Africa, and yellow fever besieges Angola.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2016
At last Love himself takes some pity of his despairing vassal, and besieges the tower where Bialacoil is confined.
From The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by Saintsbury, George
“It is a global center of gravity that cannot be besieged, disrupted or opposed by any party.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
They made it to a nearby clinic, San Antonio de Catia La Mar, where the besieged staff was implementing emergency triage, prioritizing those with life-threatening conditions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026
More drones followed, once more plunging the residents of this besieged city into a 21st century version of the Blitz.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2026
In recent months, many residents have returned home to the island, besieged from June 2023 until March 2025, when the army recaptured the capital.
From Barron's ● Apr. 22, 2026
The topiaries that had once been pruned with aspirations toward the baroque finished in a hopeless, tortured state, besieged by snails and disease.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
Noting that the pamphlet “is working a powerful change in the minds of many men,” George Washington had it read aloud to the troops besieging Boston.
From Salon ● Jan. 10, 2026
After 18 months of besieging el-Fasher, the RSF captured the city - a major victory pushing the army out of its last foothold in the vast Darfur region.
From BBC ● Dec. 16, 2025
It is a besieging of the commercial breaks of historic proportions.
From Slate ● Nov. 3, 2024
Daniel Hagari, said the forces were not besieging Shifa Hospital but allowing a safe exit point on the hospital’s eastern side.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 11, 2023
Because of this, he began to seek out new allies and to vacillate with France during the campaign the French undertook in the Kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards besieging Gaeta.
From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
