Adjuring

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To passionately and seriously urge someone to take specific action
2. Expressing a strong and serious request for someone to do something important
3. Making a heartfelt appeal to persuade someone to act promptly and sincerely

Etymology: "Adjuring" is the present participle of "adjure," a verb that Latin gave English with its oath-taking sense intact. The Latin "adiurare" combined "ad-", meaning "to" or intensifying, with "iurare", "to swear an oath," and "iurare" itself grew from a root tied to straightness and law. Someone who adjured another was binding them by oath, so the verb began as a formal, almost legal act rather than a plea. English borrowed the word in the Late Middle Ages, when it meant to bind someone by solemn oath, to question them under oath, or to entreat them earnestly. The pleading sense that the current meaning draws on grew out of those oath-binding roots, so an urgent, sincere appeal carries something of the original weight of swearing someone to a promise.

Synonyms: beseeching, imploring, entreating