set about

English

Verb

set about (third-person singular simple present sets about, present participle setting about, simple past and past participle set about)

  1. To devote oneself to some task.
    He set about designing his homepage.
    • 1963 June, “News and Comment: Road-rail co-operation”, in Modern Railways, page 362:
      No time has been lost in setting about the implementation of non-controversial Beeching proposals.
    • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games
      But that’s a dubious triumph: A book is a book and a movie is a movie, and whenever the latter merely sets about illustrating the former, it’s a failure of adaptation, to say nothing of imagination.
  2. To attack.
    Two youths set about him.

Translations

References

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