different between refall vs befall

English

Alternative forms

• re-fall

Etymology

re- +? fall

Verb

refall (third-person singular simple present refalls, present participle refalling, simple past refell, past participle refallen)

1. (rare) To fall again.

Anagrams

• Faller, Lafler, faller, fellar

English

Etymology

From Middle English bifallen, from Old English befeallan, from Proto-Germanic *bifallan?; equivalent to be- +? fall.

Pronunciation

• (UK): IPA^(key): /b??f??l/
• (US): IPA^(key): /b??f?l/, IPA^(key): /b??f?l/
• Rhymes: -??l

Verb

befall (third-person singular simple present befalls, present participle befalling, simple past befell, past participle befallen)

1. (transitive) To fall upon; fall all over; overtake

   At dusk an unusual calm befalls the wetlands.

2. (intransitive) To happen.
3. (transitive) To happen to.

   Temptation befell me.

   • 1886-88, Richard F. Burton, The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night:

     But as soon as her son espied her, bowl in hand, he thought that haply something untoward had befallen her, but he would not ask of aught until such time as she had set down the bowl, when she acquainted him with that which had occurred […]
4. (intransitive, obsolete) To fall.
   • c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665):

     With a thought I tooke for Maudline
     & a cruse of cockle pottage.
     with a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all:
     I befell into this dotage.

Synonyms

• (to fall upon)
• (to happen) come to pass, occur, transpire; See also Thesaurus:happen
• (to happen to)

Derived terms

• befalling
• misbefall

Translations

Noun

befall (plural befalls)

1. Case; instance; circumstance; event; incident; accident.
   • 1495, William Caxton, Vitas Patrum:

     Or he had tolde al his befall.

   • 1990, India. Parliament. House of the People, India. Parliament. Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha debates:

     This is proposed to be done by moving necessary amendment in this befall to the Finance Bill.

   • 1994, Socialist Party (India), Janata: Volume 49:

     He said "I would advise people to cultivate frugal habits. I will not commit the crime of making them helpless by saying that they have no responsibility whatever in the befall of calamities like old age, illness, accident, etc. [...]"

   • 1996, Thomas Pfau, Rhonda Ray Kercsmar, Rhetorical and cultural dissolution in romanticism:

     [...], the word "care" asserting itself subliminally in somewhat the same way that "fall" does in the "befall" of "Infant Joy."

References

• befall in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• befall in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• flabel

German

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b??fal/
• Hyphenation: be?fall
• Rhymes: -al

Verb

befall

1. singular imperative of befallen

Swedish

Verb

befall

1. imperative of befalla.