Bestirien

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Used in Middle English to mean rousing oneself or others into activity, movement, or vigorous effort
2. Describing the act of stirring oneself or setting someone else into motion after a period of inactivity
3. Meaning to exert oneself energetically, bringing one's body or mind back into lively action

Etymology: "Bestirien" is an Old English verb, meaning "to bestir" in the sense of stirring oneself to action, and it is a compound of "be-", an Old English prefix with an intensifying or causative force, and "stirien", "to stir, move, rouse." The prefix behaves much as it does in later English verbs like "bemoan" or "besiege," lending the base verb a sense of thoroughness or directed action. The base verb "stirien" goes back to a Germanic root that also gave modern English "stir," and in Old English it could describe physical movement as much as the rousing of a person from sleep or inactivity. The compound "bestirien" was used in a similar way, with the reflexive sense of getting oneself moving that survives in the modern English "bestir oneself." Few records of the word survive from the Old English period, so its exact frequency in everyday speech is uncertain. Its surviving use in the modern language is largely as an archaic or literary verb, most often found in the phrase "bestir oneself."