bestir

UK/bɪˈstɜː/US/bɪˈstɝ/

verbC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — stir sits at #3,393Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

To bestir is to rouse yourself into activity. Bestir yourself, bestirred himself at last, hardly bestir themselves.

It is reflexive almost always, so you bestir yourself and nobody bestirs anything else. It is deliberately old-fashioned and is used now with a note of irony about somebody slow to act.

Definitions of bestir

1verbbestirTo rouse yourself into activity.C2
“It was noon before he could bestir himself to get out of bed.”

bestir is a rousing.

Where it comes from

Old English bestyrian is be- plus stirian, to stir.

Old English
bestyrian
Middle English
bestyrien
English, today
bestir

From Middle English bestyrien, from Old English bestyrian. From Middle English bestyrien, bestirien, from Old English bestyrian (“to heap up, pile up”), equivalent to be + stir.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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