A young woman most penitently confessed to a friend of mine that an unholy desire to read women's magazines was her besetting 'temptation'.
Source: tatoeba (733806)
Besetting
Synonyms for "besetting" (40 found)
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Closest matches (8)
Strong matches (12)
Related words (20)
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Sample sentences
7 total sentences available.
A touch of nervousness is besetting me because I have a German exam tomorrow.
Source: tatoeba (1555936)
I might also here tell you of the contests and battles that such are engaged in, wherein they find the besettings of Satan, above any other of the saints.
Source: wiktionary
The first thing to bear in mind (especially if we ourselves belong to the clerico-academic-scientific type, the officially and conventionally “correct” type, “the deadly respectable” type, for which to ignore others is a besetting temptation) is that nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena from our notice, merely because we are incapable of taking part in anything like them ourselves.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 7 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.