beg
VerbOpen English WordNet
Verb (4)begged, begging, begs
- call upon in supplication; entreat“I beg you to stop!”Synonyms: imploreprayMore general pleadMore specific importune, supplicate, crave
- make a solicitation or entreaty for something; request urgently or persistently“Henry IV solicited the Pope for a divorce”“My neighbor keeps soliciting money for different charities”Synonyms: solicittapMore general request, ask forMore specific lobby, canvass, quest
- ask to obtain free“beg money and food”More general request, ask forMore specific schnorr, panhandle
- dodge, avoid answering, or take for granted“beg the question”“beg the point in the discussion”More general hedge, fudge
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Translations
Verb to ask for money or help, plead
- Spanish
- mendigar
- French
- mendier
- German
- betteln
- Italian
- mendicare
- Portuguese
- mendigar
- Turkish
- dilenmek
- Russian
- попроша́йничать poprošájničatʹ
- Arabic
- تَسَوَّلَ tasawwala
- Chinese
- 乞讨 qǐtǎo
- Japanese
- 請う kou
21 more languages
- Dutch
- bedelen
- Polish
- żebrać
- Swedish
- tigga
- Greek
- ζητιανεύω zitianévo
- Korean
- 구걸하다 gugeolhada
- Indonesian
- mengemis
- Vietnamese
- ăn xin
- Hungarian
- koldul
- Portuguese (PT)
- mendigar
- Chinese (Trad.)
- 乞討 qǐtǎo
- Catalan
- pidolar
- Czech
- žebrat
- Danish
- tigge
- Esperanto
- almozpeti
- Finnish
- kerjätä
- Icelandic
- betla
- Latvian
- ubagot
- Norwegian
- tigge
- Romanian
- cerși
- Welsh
- cardota
- Yiddish
- שנאָרן shnorn
Verb to plead with someone for help
The main translation for each meaning, from the langtolang.com multilingual dictionary. Each word links to its full entry there.
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: Turk. beg, pronounced bay. Cf. Bey, Begum.
A title of honor in Turkey and in some other parts of the East; a bey.
Origin: OE. beggen, perh. fr. AS. bedecian (akin to Goth. bedagwa beggar), biddan to ask. (Cf. Bid, transitive verb); or cf. beghard, beguin.
1. To ask earnestly for; to entreat or supplicate for; to beseech.
I do beg your good will in this case.— William Shakespeare
[Joseph] begged the body of Jesus.— Matt. xxvii. 58.
Sometimes implying deferential and respectful, rather than earnest, asking; as, I beg your pardon; I beg leave to disagree with you.
2. To ask for as a charity, esp. to ask for habitually or from house to house.
Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.— Ps. xxxvii. 25.
3. To make petition to; to entreat; as, to beg a person to grant a favor.
4. To take for granted; to assume without proof.
5. Old law To ask to be appointed guardian for, or to also to have a guardian appointed for.
Else some will beg thee, in the court of wards.— James Harrington
Hence: To beg (one) for a fool, to take him for a fool.
I beg to, is an elliptical expression for I beg leave to; as, I beg to inform you. — To beg the question, to assume that which was to be proved in a discussion, instead of adducing the proof or sustaining the point by argument. — To go a-begging, a figurative phrase to express the absence of demand for something which elsewhere brings a price; as, grapes are so plentiful there that they go a-begging.
Synonyms: To Beg, Ask, Request. To ask (not in the sense of inquiring) is the generic term which embraces all these words. To request is only a polite mode of asking. To beg, in its original sense, was to ask with earnestness, and implied submission, or at least deference. At present, however, in polite life, beg has dropped its original meaning, and has taken the place of both ask and request, on the ground of its expressing more of deference and respect. Thus, we beg a person's acceptance of a present; we beg him to favor us with his company; a tradesman begs to announce the arrival of new goods, etc. Crabb remarks that, according to present usage, “we can never talk of asking a person's acceptance of a thing, or of asking him to do us a favor.” This can be more truly said of usage in England than in America.
To ask alms or charity, especially to ask habitually by the wayside or from house to house; to live by asking alms.
I can not dig; to beg I am ashamed.— Luke xvi. 3.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
<tool> (BEG) A code generator developed by H. Emmelmann et al at GMD, University Karlsruhe, Germany. Its input language is Back End Generator Language (BEGL).
(ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/gmd/cocktail/beg).
["BEG - A Generator for Efficient Back Ends", H. Emmelmann et al, SIGPLAN Notices 24(7):227-237 (Jul 1989)].
["BEG - A Back End Generator - User Manual", H. Emmelmann, GMD, U Karlsruhe, 1990]. [Summary?]
(2000-12-16)
The Devil's Dictionary
Who is that, father?
A mendicant, child, Haggard, morose, and unaffable -- wild! See how he glares through the bars of his cell! With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.
Why did they put him there, father?
Because Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.
His belly?
Oh, well, he was starving, my boy -- A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy. No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry Was "Bread!" ever "Bread!"
What's the matter with pie?
With little to wear, he had nothing to sell; To beg was unlawful -- improper as well.
Why didn't he work?
He would even have done that, But men said: "Get out!" and the State remarked: "Scat!" I mention these incidents merely to show That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low. Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou, But for trifles --
Pray what did bad Mendicant do?
Stole two loaves of bread to replenish his lack And tuck out the belly that clung to his back.
Is that _all_ father dear?
There's little to tell: They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to -- well, The company's better than here we can boast, And there's --
Bread for the needy, dear father?
Um— toast. Atka Mip