befall

present singular third person befalls · participle present befalling · past befell · participle past befallen

1. transitiveTo fall upon; fall all over; overtake.

   At dusk an unusual calm befalls the wetlands.

2. intransitiveTo happen.

   It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon [...] that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time.

   1485 July 28, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter I, in William Caxton, editor, Le Morte D’Arthur, volume 1

   Synonyms: come to pass

3. transitiveTo happen to.

   Temptation befell me.

   4 more examples

   But as soon as her son espied her, bowl in hand, he thought that haply something untoward had befallen her, but he would not ask of aught until such time as she had set down the bowl, when she acquainted him with that which had occurred[…]

   1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC

   I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me.

   c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

   As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s.

   2013 April 15, Walter Russell Mead, “The Wreck of the Euro”, in The American Interest, retrieved 16 Apr 2013

   This wasn't the last tragedy to befall Reading. There were fatal accidents involving trains in 1855 and 1914, while on a lesser scale T E Lawrence (of Arabia) lost his precious manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom when changing trains in 1919.

   2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Reading (1840)”, in Rail, number 947, page 57

4. intransitiveobsoleteTo fall.

   With a thought I tooke for Maudline & a cruse of cockle pottage. with a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all: I befell into this dotage.

   c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665)

plural befalls

1. Case; instance; circumstance; event; incident; accident.

   Or he had tolde al his befall.

   1495, William Caxton, Vitas Patrum

   3 more examples

   This is proposed to be done by moving necessary amendment in this befall to the Finance Bill.

   1990, India. Parliament. House of the People, India. Parliament. Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha debates

   He said "I would advise people to cultivate frugal habits. I will not commit the crime of making them helpless by saying that they have no responsibility whatever in the befall of calamities like old age, illness, accident, etc. …"

   1994, Socialist Party (India), Janata: Volume 49

   [...], the word "care" asserting itself subliminally in somewhat the same way that "fall" does in the "befall" of "Infant Joy."

   1996, Thomas Pfau, Rhonda Ray Kercsmar, Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in romanticism