besotted

• besotten

besot + ed

• IPA^(key): /bɪˈsɒtɪd/
• Rhymes: -ɒtɪd

besotted

1. simple past and past participle of besot

besotted (comparative more besotted, superlative most besotted)

1. Infatuated.

   Synonyms: smitten, taken; see also Thesaurus:in love

   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], column 2:

     Paris, you ſpeake / Like one be-ſotted on your ſweet delights;

   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     Much did I wonder that so good a knight as Brian de Bois-Guilbert seemed so fondly besotted on the charms of this female, whom I received into this house merely to place a bar betwixt their growing intimacy, which else might have been cemented at the expense of the fall of our valiant and religious brother.

   • 1859 November 26 – 1860 August 25, [William] Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, […], published 1860, →OCLC:

     The few are philosophers besotted with admiration for the sound of their own lecturing voices, visionaries who waste their lives on fantastic impossibilities, or quacks whose ambition soars no higher than our corns.

   • 1990, Hanif Kureishi, chapter 17, in The Buddha of Suburbia, London, Boston: Faber and Faber, →ISBN, page 248:

     ‘They're educating me, man,’ he said about these besotted women, with whom he discussed international politics, South American literature, dance, and the ability of alcohol to induce mystic states.

2. Intellectually or morally blinded.
3. (archaic) Intoxicated, drunk.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:drunk

   • 1890, William Booth, chapter 6, in In Darkest England and the Way Out‎:

     There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink, whose mothers saturated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mothers' milk, and who were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink.

• “besotted”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• obtested