Library / English Dictionary

ACCOST

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Approach with an offer of sexual favors

Example:

The young man was caught soliciting in the park

Synonyms:

accost; hook; solicit

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "accost" is one way to...):

offer (make available or accessible, provide or furnish)

Verb group:

hook; snare (entice and trap)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s somebody

Sense 2

Meaning:

Speak to someone

Synonyms:

accost; address; come up to

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "accost" is one way to...):

come; come up (move toward, travel toward something or somebody or approach something or somebody)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "accost"):

greet; recognise; recognize (express greetings upon meeting someone)

approach (make advances to someone, usually with a proposal or suggestion)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Credits

 Context examples: 

Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley: I can guess the subject of your reverie.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:—She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)