English

Verb

accost ‎(third-person singular simple present accosts, present participle accosting, simple past and past participle accosted)

1. (transitive) To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
   • 2012 August 21, Pilkington, Ed, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian:

     The Missouri prosecutors' case against Clemons, based partly on incriminating testimony given by his co-defendants, was that Clemons was part of a group of four youths who accosted the sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge one dark night in April 1991.

2. (transitive, obsolete) To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.
   • So much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea. - Fuller
3. (transitive, obsolete) To approach; to come up to.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

4. (transitive) To speak to first; to address; to greet.
   • Milton

     Him, Satan thus accosts.

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII

     She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. 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."

5. (intransitive, obsolete) To adjoin; to lie alongside.
   • Spenser

     the shores which to the sea accost

   • Fuller

     so much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea

6. To solicit sexually.
7. (transitive) To assault (the most common modern usage).

Derived terms

• accostment

Translations

Noun

accost ‎(plural accosts)

1. (rare) Address; greeting.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of J. Morley to this entry?)

Anagrams

• coacts