befall

From Middle English befallen, from Old English befeallan, from Proto-Germanic *bifallaną. Equivalent to be- +‎ fall.

• (UK): IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɔːl/
• (US): IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɔl/, IPA^(key): /bɪˈfɑl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːl

befall (third-person singular simple present befalls, present participle befalling, simple past befell, past participle befallen)

1. (transitive) To fall upon; fall all over; overtake

   At dusk an unusual calm befalls the wetlands.

2. (intransitive) To happen.
3. (transitive) To happen to.

   Temptation befell me.

   • 1886-88, Richard F. Burton, The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night:

     But as soon as her son espied her, bowl in hand, he thought that haply something untoward had befallen her, but he would not ask of aught until such time as she had set down the bowl, when she acquainted him with that which had occurred […]

   • Shakespeare

     I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me.

   • 2013 April 15, Walter Russell Mead, “The Wreck of the Euro”, in The American Interest‎, retrieved 2013-04-16:

     As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s.

• (to fall upon)
• (to happen) come to pass, occur, transpire; See also Thesaurus:happen
• (to happen to)

• befalling
• misbefall

befall (plural befalls)

1. Case; instance; circumstance; event; incident; accident.
   • 1495, William Caxton, Vitas Patrum:

     Or he had tolde al his befall.

   • 1990, India. Parliament. House of the People, India. Parliament. Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha debates:

     This is proposed to be done by moving necessary amendment in this befall to the Finance Bill.

   • 1994, Socialist Party (India), Janata: Volume 49:

     He said "I would advise people to cultivate frugal habits. I will not commit the crime of making them helpless by saying that they have no responsibility whatever in the befall of calamities like old age, illness, accident, etc. [...]"

   • 1996, Thomas Pfau, Rhonda Ray Kercsmar, Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in romanticism:

     [...], the word "care" asserting itself subliminally in somewhat the same way that "fall" does in the "befall" of "Infant Joy."

• befall in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• befall in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• flabel

• IPA^(key): /bəˈfal/
• Hyphenation: be‧fall
• Rhymes: -al

befall

1. Imperative singular of befallen.

befall

1. imperative of befalla.