What is "besetting"

Usage examples of "besetting".

Its leadership was inexperienced, and its ideology was too vague to have any immediate relevance to the deep-seated problems besetting Iraq in the early 1960s.

The first salutary measure necessary to combat the evils besetting the city was to wipe out at once the inmates of all the prisons in Nantes.

Duchess Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season.

Chloe had left him, and he related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play-- he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemed it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished first to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.

But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the source of fifty per cent.

The unspeakable folly of the English bishops in denouncing and silencing the most effective preachers in the national church had betrayed Whitefield into his most easily besetting sin, that of censorious judgment, and his sweeping counter-denunciations of the Episcopalian clergy in general as unconverted closed to him many hearts and pulpits that at first had been hospitably open to him.

Ah, Rouletabille cursed his curiosity, for - he saw it now - it was the desire to approach the mystery revealed by Koupriane and to penetrate once more, through all the besetting dangers, an astounding and perhaps monstrous enigma, that had brought him to the threshold of the datcha des Iles, which had placed him in the trembling hands of Matrena Petrovna in promising her his help.

He had never been to the hospital and only once sought medical carefor actinic keratosis, a condition besetting fair-skinned Scandinavians, which had been remedied with the removal of a few frecklelike papules on his forehead and nose, the consequence of too much sun as an adolescent.

When this befalls one whose besetting strength and weakness alike is pride--no wonder that she doubts.

Public prayer has so many besetting sins, it is open to so many temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public prayer.

At the same time, this same love of praise is one of our most besetting and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and double and deceptive world.

In other words, the besetting temptations of many men who are set as defenders of the truth in religion, as well as in other matters, is to be wild-headed, inconsiderate, selfconceited, and intolerably arrogant.

For once, and it is almost to be feared for the last time in his life, he had resisted his besetting tendency to dispersiveness, and constrained his intelligence to apply itself to one thing at a time.

They, although on account of their great number and their ancient renown in war, and the small number of our men, they supposed they might safely fight, nevertheless considered it safer to gain the victory without any wound, by besetting the passes [and] cutting off the provisions: and if the Romans, on account of the want of corn, should begin to retreat, they intended to attack them while encumbered in their march and depressed in spirit [as being assailed while] under baggage.

The water must be gushing out across the top of the plaster-work, percolating down between the laths, saturating the plaster, which was darkening in several large irregular patches—gathering storm-clouds besetting the French Navy and darkening the sea from robin’s-egg blue to a more realistic iron-gray.