Verb

(en verb)

To insult intentionally, especially openly.

* Addison

How can anyone imagine that the fathers would have dared to affront the wife of Aurelius?

To meet defiantly; to confront.

to affront death

* 1978 , (Lawrence Durrell), Livia'', Faber & Faber 1992 (''Avignon Quintet ), p. 436:

Avignon was beginning to settle down for the night – that long painful stretch of time which must somehow be affronted .

(obsolete) To meet or encounter face to face.

* Holland

All the sea-coasts do affront the Levant.

* Shakespeare

That he, as 'twere by accident, may here / Affront Ophelia.

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.