beseech and beseek

Yesterday's cryptic crossword clue was: Begged Hugo Best to reform.

Okay, I could get that, especially with the help of Andy's Anagram Solver. 

The answer was besought.

I don't believe I've ever before come across this verb in the past tense. It occurred to me it sounded as if it should be the past tense of beseek, as in the similar verb seek - sought - have sought.

There's no verb beseek, as far as my sketchy research could discover.

Beseech does come from the same old word as seek, though. The Online Etymology Dictionary says:

c. 1200, bisecen "to entreat, beg urgently," from Old English besecan; see be- + seek. "in contrast to the simple vb., in which the northern seek has displaced the southern seech, in the compound beseech has become the standard form" [OED]. Cognate with Old Frisian biseka, Dutch bezoeken, Old High German bisuochan. German cognate besuchen is merely "to visit". Related: Besought (OED writes that beseeched is "now regarded as incorrect"); beseeching. 

I'd still say beseeched. I must check out an Australian Dictionary. I'll try Macquarie...

Yes, Macquarie in 2017 still gives it as an alternative. 

verb (t) (besought or beseeched, beseeching)
1. to implore urgently.
2. to beg eagerly for: solicit.

Interestingly, the Australian dictionary gives it as a transitive verb, but both Miriam-Webster and Dictionary.com say it can also be used intransitively, and Dictionary.com gives this example: Earnestly I did I beseech, but to no avail. 

No, I can't imagine myself using it as an intransitive verb, and a moderately determined internet search didn't find any such usages. (Is 15 minutes of lounging around at my computer to check out a couple of sites a 'determined' search?)

Oh well, off to bed to dream about words.

Walking the streets in fits and starts

My dog Penny and I set off briskly. After all, we hadn't had breakfast yet, but given the prediction of a hot day, we were trying to beat the heat. What was this? Oh yes, an interesting tree to sniff, and grass that might contain some recent pee-mails by local dogs.

We proceeded. And stopped again. Lamp-posts are always fascinating.

And so it  went, around the streets.

This surely must be the definition of  a walk that proceeds in fits and starts. Literally.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Luxury Edition defines this phrase as with irregular bursts of activity.

Yep. That's how it went.

The Word Detective looks at the phrase in some depth. In part, he says:

"Fits and starts" does indeed mean "intermittent" or "off and on, spasmodically, not making  steady progress."

Spot on!

The writer explains that the expression 'by starts' probably appeared around 1421, and the expression 'by fits' can be dated to 1583. Joining the two is described as a more-is-better model, like similarly redundant phrases such as 'in leaps and bounds.'

Once I had mentioned to Penny that breakfast awaited us in the kitchen, the pace picked up amazingly. Vertical surfaces lost their appeal. We raced home.

Deans as leaders of a group of ten

I am reading a book by Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict, A Spirituality for the 21st Century.

I find it interesting that a manual written many hundreds of years ago has so much to tell us about how to live a measured life. Joan Chittister's commentary explains how we can learn from Benedict's wisdom.

The idea is to read one section each day, but I've fallen behind and today arrived at the entry for February 26, where I  noticed this:

If the community is rather large, some chosen for their good repute and holy life should be made deans. They will take care of their groups of ten...

Whoa, I said to myself - 'groups of ten.' Hmm...dean does seem to have some resemblance to the Greek word for 'ten, or the Latin word.

So I looked it up in the Online Etymology Dictionary, and bingo! It means someone who has charge of ten people.

dean (n.)early 14c., from Old French deien (12c., Modern French doyen), from Late Latin decanus "head of a group of 10 monks in a monastery," from earlier secular meaning "commander of 10 soldiers" (which was extended to civil administrators in the late empire), from Greek dekanos, from deka "ten" (from PIE root *dekm- "ten"). Replaced Old English teoðingealdor. College sense is from 1570s (in Latin from late 13c.).