beplague

From be- +‎ plague. First attested in 1734 (see quotations).

• IPA^(key): /bɪˈpleɪɡ/
• Rhymes: -eɪɡ

beplague (third-person singular simple present beplagues, present participle beplaguing, simple past and past participle beplagued)

1. (archaic, transitive) To plague. [from early-18th c.]
   • July 20, 1734 (date written), “To the Same”, in Part of the Poetical Works of the Late Rev. Samuel Shepherd, A. M., Dublin:  […] W. Sleater, published 1790, page 56:

     And there with laughter to beplague you,
     'Till it has ſhaken off your ague.

   • 1790, Thomas Rodd, The Theriad, London:  […] W. Lowndes, page 14:

     “ If not, I aſk what other evil
     “ Can ſo beplague us but the devil?

   • 1858 February, Burton, “Zanzibar; and Two Months in East Africa”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume LXXXIII, number DVIII, Edinburgh, Chapter III.–Mombas, page 219, column 1:

     It has its inconveniences, being distant from that source of all comfort, the well, and beplagued with ants.

   • 1950 [1949], Stanley D. Porteus, chapter I, in The Restless Voyage, London; Sydney: George G. Harrap & Co.; The Australian Publishing Co., page 11:

     True, my father was buried at sea, but only because he was a soldier of the 45th Highlanders who went overseas to St Lucia in the 1793 expedition and there died of one of those bloody fluxes that so beplague men unused to the climate of the West Indies.

• “beplague, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.