A task, job, or work; labor or employment, especially tedious or necessary work.
From Old French 'besogne' and 'besoigne,' which came from Latin 'bisunium' via Romance languages. The word traveled through French into Middle English, where it referred to labor or occupation.
This French-origin word never really stuck in English the way it did in French—'besogne' is mostly found in historical or scholarly texts, making it a perfect example of how English borrowed words but then abandoned many of them.
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