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

To bully in an intimidating, bossy, or supercilious way.

Though the teacher browbeat all the children, they still acted out during the lesson.