Trivia Time

Which ancient city endured a siege in Homer's Iliad?

Test Your Knowledge

siege

American  

[seej] / sidʒ /

noun

sieges plural

1. the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.

2. any prolonged or persistent effort to overcome resistance.

3. a series of illnesses, troubles, or annoyances besetting a person or group.

   a siege of head colds.

4. a prolonged period of trouble or annoyance.

5. Ornithology. Also

   1. a flock of herons.

   2. the station of a heron at prey.

6. the shelf or floor of a glassmaking furnace on which the glass pots are set.

7. Obsolete.

   1. a seat, especially one used by a person of distinction, as a throne.

   2. station as to rank or class.

---

verb (used with object)

sieged, sieging

1. to assail or assault; besiege.

idioms

1. lay siege to, to besiege.

   The army laid siege to the city for over a month.

siege British  

/ siːdʒ /

noun

1. 1. the offensive operations carried out to capture a fortified place by surrounding it, severing its communications and supply lines, and deploying weapons against it

   2. ( as modifier )

      siege warfare

2. a persistent attempt to gain something

3. a long tedious period, as of illness, etc

4. obsolete a seat or throne

5. to besiege

---

verb

1. (tr) to besiege or assail

Synonym Usage

Siege, blockade are terms for prevention of free movement to or from a place during wartime. Siege implies surrounding a city and cutting off its communications, and usually includes direct assaults on its defenses. Blockade is applied more often to naval operations that block all commerce, especially to cut off food and other supplies from defenders.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• siegeable
  adjective
• unsieged
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• sieges
  plural

Etymology

Origin of siege

First recorded in 1175–1225; (noun) Middle English sege, from Old French: “seat,” noun derivative of siegier, from unattested Vulgar Latin sedicāre “to set,” derivative of Latin sedēre “to sit” ( see sit ¹); (verb) Middle English segen, derivative of the noun

Explanation

Your city is under siege if it is surrounded on all sides by an opposing force on attack. Think of a castle surrounded by a legion of armed knights. Like many military words, siege can be used metaphorically. If you start getting thousands of e-mail messages trying to sell you canned meat, you might feel like you're under a siege of spam selling spam. In this case, you have been besieged by spam. And even more unfortunately, if you are having a siege of bad luck, you have been besieged by bad luck.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

siege sieges sieged sieging

That landmark picture features McElwee, then in his mid-30s, as he tries to chronicle the exploits of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who laid siege to the South during the Civil War.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2026

As a medical student, Hamawy had gone to Bosnia, flying into Sarajevo on a white U.N. plane while the city was under siege.

From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2026

Mohamed Refaat of the International Organization for Migration warned the city is nearing a total siege, with civilians "soon unable to leave or return".

From Barron's ● Jun. 29, 2026

When Todd Haynes made his 1995 masterpiece “Safe”—which cast Julianne Moore as a Los Angeles housewife under siege by myriad illnesses—environmental disease was an enigma.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026

Kether, artist and designer of catapults and siege engines, needed only a drafting table brought into his room at the guildhall.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

Similar sieges unfolded across Syria—in Duma, Zabadani, and beyond.

From Slate ● Nov. 19, 2025

We stretch beyond the cathedral and onto Pamplona’s city walls, where the stone holds centuries of sieges, prayers, and heartbreak.

From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2025

The UN human rights chief has said sieges are illegal under international law.

From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2023

"If we cannot work because we're always suffering new interruptions, sieges, strikes or blockades, we lose strength," said Fernando Hurtado, president the region's industrial chamber Cainco, in a video message alongside other business heads.

From Reuters ● Jan. 3, 2023

The beat knights had gone to perfection, leaving the wont to hold their sieges.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

On February 28, 1993, law enforcement sieged Mount Carmel Center ranch, the compound that belonged to Koresh and his religious cult.

From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2023

And a subsequent screening he met several audience members who said they were from Mariupol and that their relatives were escaping the sieged city at the same time he was.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 23, 2023

“There is quite a lot of people still remaining in the absolutely sieged city of Mariupol in some inhumane conditions,” he said during a video briefing.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 4, 2022

Over these past weekends, many of my friends have attended medical first aid courses, survival courses on how to survive in an occupied or sieged city.

From Slate ● Feb. 18, 2022

The city's sieged, and thou thus chain'd In airy fetters of a lady's love!

From A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume 14 of 15 by Dodsley, Robert

It has also levied some sanctions on those doing the sieging.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 24, 2022

Italy, all but some sieging of strong-places, may be considered as lost for the present.

From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 09 by Carlyle, Thomas

He knew that before him lay the culminating battle of his long and ardent sieging of Fortune's stronghold.

From The Trail of the Axe A Story of Red Sand Valley by Cullum, Ridgwell

On the other hand, that this mode of sieging by red-hot balls seems a little unusual; for the rest, that he has himself no order or intention but that of resisting to the last.'

From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 12 by Carlyle, Thomas

"But there is time ahead of us," said everybody at Breslau; "Glogau will take some sieging!"

From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 12 by Carlyle, Thomas

Related Words

• barricade
• closure
• encirclement
• restriction
• roadblock
• stoppage