accosting

Verb

accost (third-person singular simple present accosts, present participle accosting, simple past and past participle accosted)

1. (transitive) To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
   • A beggar accosted me as soon as I stepped outside.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To join side to side; to border.
3. (broadly, obsolete, transitive) To sail along the coast or side of.
4. (obsolete, transitive) To approach; to come up to.
   • You mistake, knight. ‘Accost’ is front / her, board her, woo her, assail her.c. 1601–1602, William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act 1, scene 3, lines 53–54
5. (transitive) To speak to first; to address; to greet.
   • Him, Satan thus accosts.1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost, line 653
6. (intransitive, obsolete) To adjoin; to lie alongside.
   • For all the Shores, which to the Sea accost1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V”, in The Faerie Queene, canto 2, stanza XLII

See all 10 meanings of accost