Obsecrate

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To ask someone earnestly and humbly for help or a favor, pleading with great sincerity
2. Pleading urgently and with deep feeling for a thing one desperately wants granted
3. Begging fervently and solemnly, often in a religious or formal manner, for mercy or aid

Etymology: Obsecrate is an old, rare verb meaning to beseech earnestly, and it comes straight from Latin: "obsecrare," formed from "ob" (before, against, or intensively here) and "sacrare" (to consecrate, make sacred, from "sacer," sacred). The sense is literally to call on someone by something holy, so the word carried a religious tone from the start, as if pleading in the name of the gods. English borrowed it in the early 1500s, when writers were freely importing Latin vocabulary, and it appears in translations and religious prose of that period. Its near-twin "obsecration" names the act of pleading, and both words kept a formal, churchly flavour that made them sound grand even when the request was humble.

Synonyms: beseech, entreat, implore