abet

Definition 
Abet means to incite, instigate, or encourage someone to act, often wrongfully. The word derives from an old command for a dog to "sic'em" or "go get'em," and owes its life to the "sport" of bearbaiting, which was as popular as cricket in 14th- and 15th-century England. In bearbaiting, a recently trapped bear, starved to make it unnaturally vicious, was chained to a stake or put in a pit, and a pack of dogs was set loose upon it in a fight to the death, which the bear always lost, after inflicting great punishment on the dogs. Spectators who urged the dogs on were said to abet them, abet here being the contraction of the Old French abeter, "to bait, to hound on," which in turn derived from the Norse beita, "to cause to bite." Bearbaiting was virtually a Sunday institution in England for 800 years, until it was banned in 1835; Queen Elizabeth I once attended a "Bayting" at which 13 bears were killed.