Word.ws English Dictionary

beleaguer

/bɪˈliː.ɡə/US/bɪˈli.ɡɚ/

beleaguer verb: to besiege; to surround with troops.

Verb

beleaguer (third-person singular simple present beleaguers, present participle beleaguering, simple past and past participle beleaguered)

  1. To besiege; to surround with troops.
    • I have read in some old marvellous tale, / Some legend strange and vague, / That a midnight host of spectres pale / Beleaguered the walls of Prague. // Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, / With the wan moon overhead, / There stood, as in an awful dream, / The army of the dead.1838 October, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Beleaguered City”, in Voices of the Night, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1839, →OCLC, stanzas 1–2, page 22
    Synonyms:
    beset, belay, encircle, invest, lay siege to
  2. To vex, harass, or beset.
  3. To exhaust.

beleaguer meaning in Urdu, Bengali and Kannada

beleaguer in Urdu

قبضہ کرنا, جنگی محاصرہ کرنا

beleaguer in Bengali

অবরোধ করা, কষ্ট দেওয়া

beleaguer in Kannada

ಮುತ್ತು, ಮುತ್ತಿಗೆ ಹಾಕು

Synonyms of beleaguer

29 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of beleaguer

Forms of beleaguer

third-person singular presentbeleaguers
present participlebeleaguering
past participlebeleaguered
pastbeleaguered
alternative formbeleagure

Origin of beleaguer

Borrowed from Dutch belegeren and/or Middle Low German belēgeren; equivalent to be- + lair. Compare also German belagern, Danish belejre. The English spelling was perhaps influenced by unrelated league.

Words formed from beleaguer

Words that rhyme with beleaguer

Questions about beleaguer

What does beleaguer mean?
Beleaguer means to besiege; to surround with troops.
What is beleaguer in Urdu?
Beleaguer in Urdu is قبضہ کرنا, جنگی محاصرہ کرنا. See Beleaguer meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is beleaguer?
Beleaguer is a verb.
How do you pronounce beleaguer?
Beleaguer is pronounced /bɪˈliː.ɡə/ (UK).
What is the past tense of beleaguer?
The past tense of beleaguer is beleaguered.

Words near beleaguer in the dictionary

  1. Belding's ground squirrel
  2. Beldings
  3. belead
  4. beleading
  5. beleads
  6. beleaguer
  7. beleaguered
  8. beleaguerer
  9. beleaguerers
  10. beleaguering
  11. beleaguerment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beleaguer (page history and authors); beleaguer (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beleaguer (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beleaguer (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-beleaguer.wav.

Cite this entry: “beleaguer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beleaguer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.