set about

English edit

Verb edit

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

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[1]
  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.
To attack.
Two youths set about him.

Translations edit

to initiate or begin some action

Czech: pustit se do pf
Dutch: op het punt staan te, eraan beginnen, aan de slag schieten
Finnish: aloittaa (fi), alkaa (fi), ryhtyä (fi)
French: entreprendre (fr), s’attaquer à
Hungarian: hozzáfog (hu), nekiáll (hu), nekilát (hu)
Irish: ionsaigh, scaoil faoi
Italian: iniziare (it), cominciare (it), intraprendere (it)
Latin: eō (la)
Rumanian: se apuca, porni (ro), se pune
Russian: приступить к (pristupitʹ k)
Turkish: başlatmak (tr)

to attack

Dutch: aanvallen (nl)
Finnish: käydä päälle, käydä kimppuun
French: attaquer (fr)
Hungarian: megtámad (hu), nekimegy (hu)
Irish: ionsaigh
Italian: aggredire (it)
Turkish: saldırmak (tr)

References edit

“set about”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.