befall

verb

1. (transitive)To fall upon; fall all over; overtake.

   “At dusk an unusual calm befalls the wetlands.”

2. (intransitive)To happen.

   “It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon [...] that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time.”

3. (transitive)To happen to.

   “Temptation befell me.”

   “But as soon as her son espied her, bowl in hand, he thought that haply something untoward had befallen her, but he would not ask of aught until such time as she had set down the bowl, when she acquainted him with that which had occurred[…]”

   “I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me.”

   “As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s.”

   “This wasn't the last tragedy to befall Reading. There were fatal accidents involving trains in 1855 and 1914, while on a lesser scale T E Lawrence (of Arabia) lost his precious manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom when changing trains in 1919.”

4. (intransitive, obsolete)To fall.

   “With a thought I tooke for Maudline & a cruse of cockle pottage. with a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all: I befell into this dotage.”

noun

1. Case; instance; circumstance; event; incident; accident.

   “Or he had tolde al his befall.”

   “This is proposed to be done by moving necessary amendment in this befall to the Finance Bill.”

   “He said "I would advise people to cultivate frugal habits. I will not commit the crime of making them helpless by saying that they have no responsibility whatever in the befall of calamities like old age, illness, accident, etc. …"”

   “[...], the word "care" asserting itself subliminally in somewhat the same way that "fall" does in the "befall" of "Infant Joy."”