besot
Americanverb (used with object)
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to intoxicate or stupefy with drink.
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to make stupid or foolish.
The stories had besotted her mind with fear and superstition.
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to infatuate; obsess.
Youth and beauty have a tendency to besot middle-aged men; charm and tenderness does it for women of all ages.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of besot
Explanation
To besot is to make someone dazed or foolish. If television tends to besot you, it would be smart not to watch a lot of TV right before a big test at school. The verb besot is much less common than the related adjective besotted, which means so infatuated with someone that it leaves you dizzy and a little bit silly. Both words have their roots in the Old English sott, "stupid person or fool." A parent may fill a birthday piñata with toys instead of candy if they believe that sugar would just besot all the party guests.
Vocabulary lists containing besot
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:
And don't you forget You will ne'er be forgot, You never should fret As at times you have frot, I would chase all the cares that beset, if they ever besot.
From The Book of Humorous Verse by Wells, Carolyn
Nightmares Ride in their wake, the spirits to besot.
From All About Coffee by Ukers, William H. (William Harrison)
Oh, he had no right thus to besot himself with adoration!
From Chivalry by Cabell, James Branch
It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you like no other place in the world so well.”
From Aurora the Magnificent by Brownell, Gertrude Hall
Ah cruel fates, why do you then besot Poor Corin's soul with love, when love is fled?
From Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris by Crow, Martha Foote
It opens in a London pub, where Rodrigo is besotted by a boy who "looks like an angel on the walls of Versailles".
From BBC ● Jun. 10, 2026
My source remembers vividly that Mojtaba was totally besotted with the apocalypse and was also just a very shrewd, intelligent guy.
From Slate ● Mar. 11, 2026
Which would concern her much more if she weren’t besotted by the newest member of the faculty.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
Fairly early in his lengthy investment career, in the mid-1960s, this thrifty son of Yorkshire, England, grew besotted with speculative small-cap stocks.
From Barron's ● Dec. 31, 2025
A man besotted, he calculated what it would weigh, calculating again and again that the building could support the load easily.
From "Typical American" by Gish Jen
That delivers 0-60 mph acceleration pace in the 7s—adequate, though hardly besotting.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2015
To accomplish these selfish projects, they applied every engine toward besotting the multitude with superstition and enthusiasm.
From Mysticism and its Results Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy by Delafield, John
It is a besotting kind of taste, likely to turn into a disease.
From Daniel Deronda by Eliot, George
"Will you stand here besotting yourself, and allow your child to be flung into a pauper's grave?"
From The Life of Thomas Wanless, Peasant by Wilson, Alexander Johnstone
How to get over, how to escape from, the besotting particularity of fiction.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) by Lang, Andrew
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.
