Word.ws English Dictionary

abought

/əˈbɔːt/

abought is the simple past and past participle of aby.

Meaning of aby

Verb

aby (simple past and past participle abought, no other forms attested in Modern English)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To pay the penalty for (something); to atone for, to make amends.
    • Foole-hardy Knight, full soone thou shalt aby / This fond reproach, thy body will I hang, [Hee takes down / his pole.] / And loe vpon that string thy teeth shall hang: Prepare thy selfe, for dead soone shalt thou bee1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act III, signature G, recto
    Synonyms:
    make up
  2. (archaic, figuratively, transitive) To pay (something) as a penalty, to atone for; to suffer (something).
    • Who dyes the vtmoſt dolor doth abye, / But who that liues, is lefte to waile his loſſe: / So life is loſſe, and death felicity.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 38, page 455
    Synonyms:
    sustain
  3. (transitive, obsolete except Scotland) To endure or tolerate (something); to experience.
    • The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet.1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Wood by Silvermills”, in Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC, page 131
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To pay for (something); to buy.
  5. (intransitive, obsolete) To pay the penalty; to atone.
    Synonyms:
    expiate, propitiate
  6. (intransitive, obsolete) To endure; to remain.
    • So long as breath, and hable puiſſaunce / Did natiue corage vnto him ſupply, / His pace he freſhly forward did aduaunce, / And carried her beyond all ieopardy, / But nought that wanteth reſt, can long aby.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 3, pages 494–495

See all 9 meanings of aby

Words that rhyme with abought

22 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about abought

What is abought the simple past and past participle of?
Abought is the simple past and past participle of aby.
How do you pronounce abought?
Abought is pronounced /əˈbɔːt/ (US).

Words near abought in the dictionary

  1. abouchement
  2. abouchements
  3. Aboud
  4. Abouds
  5. aboue
  6. abought
  7. Aboukir
  8. aboulia
  9. aboulias
  10. aboulic
  11. aboulomania

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: abought (page history and authors); aby (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-abought.wav.

Cite this entry: “abought.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abought. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.