All 4 Uses of
bestow
in
A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Even when Gravesend Academy bestowed the intellectual honor upon Pastor Merrill—of inviting him to be a frequent guest preacher in the academy's nondenominational church—Owen was critical.†
p. 115.6bestowed = gave
- Their campaign was relentless, but minor; she tried out for parts conventionally bestowed upon men; he went after the lesser women's roles—preferably nonspeaking.†
p. 245.2 *
- Until that summer, my long apprenticeship to maturity struck me as arduous and humiliating; Randy White had confiscated my fake draft card, and I wasn't yet old enough to buy beer—I wasn't independent enough to merit my own place to live, I wasn't earning enough to afford my own car, and I wasn't something enough to persuade a woman to bestow her sexual favors upon me.†
p. 423.4bestow = give
- But the couch was at present uninviting, the result of Hester taking pity on one of Durham's stray dogs; the mutt had demonstrated its gratitude by bestowing upon Hester's living-room couch an infestation of fleas.†
p. 478.9bestowing = giving
Definitions:
-
(1)
(bestow) to give -- typically to present as an honor or give as a gift
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, in classic literature, bestow can also mean to give more generally or to put, place, or store (to stow) something somewhere.