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Definition of "besetting" [be•set•ting]

  • Constantly troubling or attacking. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "besetting" in a sentence
  • "I know men who spend forty years fighting what they call their besetting sin, and on which they waste strength enough to evangelize the world."
  • "One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin."
  • "This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period."