Word.ws English Dictionary

importunest

importunest is the second-person singular simple present indicative of importune.

Meaning of importune

Verb

importune (third-person singular simple present importunes, present participle importuning, simple past and past participle importuned)

  1. (transitive) To bother, irritate, trouble.
    • To deliberate, be it but in slight matters, doth importune me.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter XVII, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To harass with persistent requests.
    • Gentlemen, importune me no farther, / For hovv I firmly am reſolu'd you knovv: / That is, not to beſtovv my yongeſt daughter, / Before I haue a husband for the elder: […]c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  3. (transitive) To approach to offer one's services as a prostitute, or otherwise make improper proposals.
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To import; to signify.
    • It importunes death.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 16

See all 8 meanings of importune

Origin of importunest

importune + -est

Questions about importunest

What is importunest the second-person singular simple present indicative of?
Importunest is the second-person singular simple present indicative of importune.

Words near importunest in the dictionary

  1. importunement
  2. importunements
  3. importuner
  4. importuners
  5. importunes
  6. importunest
  7. importuneth
  8. importuning
  9. importunings
  10. importunities
  11. importunity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: importunest (page history and authors); importune (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.

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