Word.ws English Dictionary

poursue

poursue is the obsolete form of pursue.

Meaning of pursue

Verb

pursue (third-person singular simple present pursues, present participle pursuing, simple past and past participle pursued)

  1. (ambitransitive) To follow urgently, originally with intent to capture or harm; to chase.
    • pursue one's dreams
  2. (transitive) To follow, travel down (a particular way, course of action etc.).
    • Her rival pursued a quite different course.
  3. (transitive) To aim for, go after (a specified objective, situation etc.).
    • He even stands to gain in world terms: his noisy critics strengthen his projected image of a man determined to pursue peace with Palestinians.1 December 2009, Benjamin Pogrund, “Freeze won't hurt Netanyahu”, in The Guardian
  4. (transitive) To participate in (an activity, business etc.); to practise, follow (a profession).
    • The Kedarites are depicted as herders of sheep and goats who pursued a seminomadic existence and lived scattered over a wide area of the desert region east of the land of Israel.2001, David L. Lieber, Jules Harlow, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, page 141
  5. (transitive) To urge (someone or something) to act in a particular way.
    • The mayor promised to pursue the city to be an Olympic sports venue.
  6. (intransitive) To act as a legal prosecutor.

See all 7 meanings of pursue

Forms of poursue

third-person singular presentpoursues
present participlepoursuing
past participlepoursued
pastpoursued

Questions about poursue

What is poursue the obsolete form of?
Poursue is the obsolete form of pursue.

Words near poursue in the dictionary

  1. pours with rain
  2. poursew
  3. poursewed
  4. poursewing
  5. poursews
  6. poursue
  7. poursued
  8. poursues
  9. poursuing
  10. poursuit
  11. poursuits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poursue (page history and authors); pursue (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: “poursue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poursue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.