Word.ws English Dictionary

besail

besail verb: to attack or assail; lunge at or toward; assault.

Verb

besail (third-person singular simple present besails, present participle besailing, simple past and past participle besailed)

  1. (archaic, poetic, rare, transitive) To attack or assail; lunge at or toward; assault.
    • The civvies and the brakesmen, with clubs they did me besail;
      They marched me right straight over to the Albany Jail […]1960, New York Folklore Quarterly, volume 16, page 100
    • The narrow besailed giants stood with long limbs rooted deep in the surface. Every so often a leg would ponderously rise and anchor itself elsewhere, as a sifter repositioned itself with the changing wind.2013, A J Dalton, Gateway of the Saviours

Forms of besail

third-person singular presentbesails
present participlebesailing
past participlebesailed
pastbesailed

Origin of besail

From be- (“at, toward”) + sail (“to attack, assail”), from Middle English sailen (“to attack”), short for assailen (“to assail”).

Questions about besail

What does besail mean?
Besail means to attack or assail; lunge at or toward; assault.
What part of speech is besail?
Besail is a verb.
What is the past tense of besail?
The past tense of besail is besailed.

Words near besail in the dictionary

  1. besagews
  2. besague
  3. besagues
  4. besaiel
  5. besaiels
  6. besail
  7. besaile
  8. besailed
  9. besailes
  10. besailing
  11. besails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: besail (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:

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