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befall

UK/bɪˈfɔːl/US/bɪˈfɔl/
verbC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,030 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: befalls, befalling

To befall is to happen to somebody, usually for the worse. Should anything befall him, whatever may befall, the fate that befell them.

It is formal and literary, and it is almost always bad — nothing good ever befalls anybody in ordinary English. It takes a person as its object with no preposition. The past is befell. Note that the compound is be- plus fall, and the idea of misfortune falling on somebody is shared with the German and Dutch equivalents.

Definitions of befall

  1. 1verbbefallTo happen to somebody, usually for the worse.C1

    “The villagers feared that some disaster would befall them if they angered the gods.”

befall is a happening to somebody.

Where it comes from

Old English befeallan is be- plus feallan, to fall. The image of trouble falling on somebody is shared across the Germanic languages.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *bifallaną

  2. Proto-West Germanic

    *bifallan

  3. Old English

    befeallan

  4. Middle English

    bifallen

  5. English, today

    befall

From Middle English bifallen, from Old English befeallan, from Proto-West Germanic bifallan, from Proto-Germanic bifallaną; equivalent to be + fall.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

befall in the wild

  • In this cartoon Goofy goes fishing with his pet grasshopper, Wilbur, only for persistent bad luck to befall the duo.

    Goofy and Wilbur

  • The story recounts the events that befall Joe Wilson and his family, and which ultimately lead to his buying a double buggy for his wife, Mary.

    A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek

  • Folk tradition maintains that great misfortune will befall anyone that dares fell a zapis.

    Zapis

  • The sack of Thessalonica in 1185 by Normans of the Kingdom of Sicily was one of the worst disasters to befall the Byzantine Empire in the 12th century.

    Sack of Thessalonica (1185)

  • The present tense evolved out of the verb kil, meaning "to be possible" or "to befall".

    Middle Tamil

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • fall