Verb

(en verb)

To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.

*{{quote-news, date = 21 August 2012

, first = Ed , last = Pilkington , title = Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die? , newspaper = The Guardian , url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/21/death-penalty-trial-reggie-clemons?newsfeed=true , page = , passage = The Missouri prosecutors' case against Clemons, based partly on incriminating testimony given by his co-defendants, was that Clemons was part of a group of four youths who accosted the sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge one dark night in April 1991. }}

(obsolete) To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.

* So much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea. - Fuller

(obsolete) To approach; to come up to.

(Shakespeare)

To speak to first; to address; to greet.

* Milton

Him, Satan thus accosts .

* 1847 , , (Jane Eyre), Chapter XVIII

She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request—"She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink."

(obsolete) To adjoin; to lie alongside.

* Spenser

the shores which to the sea accost

* Fuller

so much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea

To solicit sexually.

Verb

(transitive, and, intransitive) To persuade someone to do something which they are reluctant to do, especially by flattery or promises; to coax.

* 1722 , , Moll Flanders , ch. 12:

Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what service he had done him.

* 1820 , , The Abbot , ch. 27:

If you are cajoled by the cunning arguments of a trumpeter of heresy, or the praises of a puritanic old woman, is not that womanish?

* 1894 , , Only An Irish Boy , ch. 19:

He had tried bullying, and without success. He would try cajoling and temptation.

* 1898 , , The Battle Of The Strong , ch. 37:

[W]ith eloquent arts he had cajoled a young girl into a secret marriage.

* 1917 , , King Coal , ch. 8:

Schulman, general manager of the "G. F. C.," had been sending out messengers to hunt for him, and finally had got him in his office, arguing and pleading, cajoling and denouncing him by turns.

* 2010 August 4, Michael Scherer, " NonSTARTer? Obama's Troubled Nuclear Treaty," Time :

For weeks, the White House, the Pentagon and Senate Democrats have been working overtime to cajole , convince and placate Republicans.