English

Verb

hæsitate ‎(third-person singular simple present hæsitates, present participle hæsitating, simple past and past participle hæsitated)

1. Archaic spelling of hesitate.
   • 1683, Desiderius Erasmus (author) and White Kennett (translator), Witt against Wisdom: Or, A panegyrick upon Folly (Oxford: Anthony Stephens), page 30:

     Next to Socrates comes his Scholar Plato, a famous Oratour indeed, that could be ſo daſht out of countenance by an illiterate rabble, as to demur, and hauk, and hæſitate, before he could get to the end of one ſhort ſentence.

   • 1756, George Benson, The history of the first planting of the christian religion: taken from the Acts of the apostles, and their epiſtles, together with the Remarkable facts of the jewiſh and roman hiſtory; which affected the christians, within this period, volume 1 of 3 (second edition; London, J. Waugh and W. Fenner), page 183:

     I anſwer, that this objection made me hæſitate a long time; and rather incline to fix his haveing the word of wiſdom communicated to him, when he became an apostle.