harass
Transitive verb
Pronunciation and accent: hærəs
Indicative past, past participle and present participle: Harassed, harassed, harassing.
Etymology: From French harasser: to tire; also, to importune. The French vocable is of disputed origin.
Vocables derived from harass: unharassed, over-harassed, harassed (adj.), harassedly, harassing (participle adj.), harassable, harasser, harassery, harass (noun), harassment, harassing (noun)
1. To tire; to fatigue with overwork; to cause (a person or other animal) to tire with efforts or with something grievous. (Archaic acceptation)
Semantic-etymological identity with French harasser.
Synonym: fag.
I cannot at present tell you how, or where, you can direct to me. For very early shall I leave this place; harassed and fatigued to death.
Samuel Richardson (Clarissa)
2. (The subject being an group of persons, an army, etc.) To invade hostilely, predatorily or destructively (a country, a land, a field, etc.)
Synonyms: to raid, harry, devastate, ravage, devastate, plunder.
Antonyms: pacify, appease, conciliate.
Equivalents: devastar, in Spanish; ravager, piller, in French; devastare, in Italian.
The Normans were the posterity of those Danes who had so long and so cruelly harassed the British islands and the shore of the adjoining continent.
Edmund Burke (The Works)
[…] complaints were made that the countries aforesaid were harassed and oppressed.
Edmund Burke (The Works)
Italy, and the islands, were harassed by their fleets [the Saracens’s], and all Europe alarmed by their vigorous and frequent enterprises.
Edmund Burke (Selections from the Speeches)
3. (The subject being an group of persons, an army, etc.) To aggress repeatedly (the inhabitants or the defenders of a land, country, island, etc.); to behave hostilely against (a people, etc.) by repeated attacks, incursions, etc., as in war.
Synonyms: vex; assail.
Equivalents: attaccare, in Italian; atacar, hostilizar, agredir, in Spanish; harceler, attaquer, in French.
[The Britons] no longer, therefore, opposed the Romans in the open field; they formed frequent ambuscades; they divided themselves into light flying parties, and continually harassed the enemy on his march.
Edmund Burke (The Works)
Then King Don Sancho came against his brother, to besiege him in Santarem. And the Portugueze and Galegos took counsel together what they should do; for some were of advice that it was better to defend the cities and fortresses which they held, and so lengthen out the war; others that they should harass the army of the Castillians with frequent skirmishes and assaults […]
Robert Southey (Chronicle of the Cid)
After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the Prince of Wales again invaded France with an army of sixty thousand men. He went through the south of the country, burning and plundering wheresoever he went; while his father, […], did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and worried in his retreat from that country by the Scottish men.
Charles Dickens (A Child’s Story)
4. Hence: a. To assail, to aggress in other circumstance than an incursion; to treat unfriendly. b. To impede by a harassing attack.
The Indians unceasingly harassed their march.
Francis Parkman (Huguenots in Florida, 1865)
5. (The subject being a person) To trouble, grieve, or vex by inconsiderate or importunate behaviour; to molest persistently; to annoy with reiterated misbehaviour; to importune with reiterated demands or requirements; to persecute with something unwanted or undesired.
Equivalents: importuner, ennuyer, gêner, in French; importunare, molestare, infastidire, in Italian; molestar, fastidiar, acosar, in Spanish.
Synonyms: nag, trouble, distress, bully, bother, persecute, disturb, annoy, vex, worry, molest.
Antonyms: please, soothe, solace, comfort, relieve, gratify, cheer.
Years back, predators such as cougars, wolves, and humans harassed the horses and drove them to new ranges, mixing up the herds so that far less inbreeding occurred.
Dayton Hyde (The Pastures of Beyond)
According to the inmates, not only was bullying tolerated, some teachers condoned it and participated in it. Devlin reports that teachers often verbally harassed the students, were insensitive to disabilities, and even exhibited overt racial prejudice and outright cruelty.
Shaheen Shariff (Cyber-bullying)
[…] although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be beloved—good, beautiful, sensible, and kind—the King from the first neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power to make him unpopular.
Charles Dickens (A Child’s Story)
[The company] evicted workers from company houses, and generally harassed the workers.
Walter Mckeever (Murder in Pittsburgh)
I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel.
Edgar Allan Poe
His men also complain that they are harassed with the duty of watching for protection of a castle, in itself impregnable, and sufficiently garrisoned, and that they lose all opportunity of honourable enterprise […]
Walter Scott (The Betrothed)
I was perpetually harassed with importunate demands, and insulted by wretches, who a few months before would not have dared to raise their eyes from the dust before me.
Samuel Johnson (The Adventurer and Idler)
[Euryalus] resolved to harass himself no longer with the drudgery of getting money, but to quit his business and his profit, and enjoy for a few years the pleasures of travel.
Samuel Johnson (The Adventurer and Idler)
George Brand set out house-hunting with two exceptional circumstances in his favor: he knew precisely what he wanted, and he was prepared to pay for it. Moreover, he undertook the task willingly and cheerfully. It was something to do. It would fill in a portion of that period of suspense. It would prevent his harassing himself with speculations as to his own future—speculations which were obviously useless until he should learn what was required of him by the Council.
William Black (Sunrise)
***Notice the construction with the prepositions into and out of, which denote the state or condition gained by harassing:
Similarly, in their other defensive ploys the Knicks' object was to harass their opponents into committing turnovers—that is, losing the ball by making wayward passes or committing technical infraction
New Yorker 7 Apr. 1975
They had Training, Advisory, and Counseling Officers, TACs, who looked out for their well-being as they guided and often harassed the students into perfection.
Jan Hornung (Kiss the Sky: Helicopter Tales)
After the Union defeat at Ball’s Bluff, the committee […] harassed him out of service.
Charles Pierce Roland (An American Iliad)
5. The subject being a thing, instead of a person, the use is metaphorical, as if it persecuted one with care or annoy.
I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it is light he shall feel no more.
Samuel Johnson (Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia)
Not to come to town while the great struggle continues is, undoubtedly, well resolved. But do not harass yourself into danger; you owe the care of your health to all that love you, at least to all whom it is your duty to love.
Samuel Johnson (Tales)
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, (for it could not justly be termed a caricature,) I will not now venture to describe.
Edgar Allan Poe
I hope you won't let his mind be harassed by money matters.
William Black (Prince Fortunatus) OTHER DICTIONARIES BY ESTEFALU: