Word.ws English Dictionary

béguin

/beˈɡiːn/

béguin noun: an infatuation or fancy.

Noun

béguin (plural béguins)

  1. An infatuation or fancy.
    • Then he said: 'But what does Ata say to it?' 'It appears that she has a beguin for you,' I said. 'She's willing if you are. Shall I call her?'1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 51”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC
    • ‘I see now. And you have a béguin for her too? It is no use, I warn you.’1972, Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain

Forms of béguin

pluralbéguins

Origin of béguin

Colloquial French béguin (“bonnet”). The verb embéguiner (“to wear a bonnet”) came to mean ‘to have a crush on someone’. The word itself came from beguine (lay nuns who typically wore such bonnets).

Questions about béguin

What does béguin mean?
Béguin means an infatuation or fancy.
What part of speech is béguin?
Béguin is a noun.
How do you pronounce béguin?
Béguin is pronounced /beˈɡiːn/.
What is the plural of béguin?
The plural of béguin is béguins.

Words near béguin in the dictionary

  1. béchamel
  2. béchamel sauce
  3. béchamel sauces
  4. béchamels
  5. Béchar
  6. béguin
  7. béguins
  8. Béja
  9. Béjar
  10. Béjaïa
  11. Békés

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: béguin (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.

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

Cite this entry: “béguin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/b%C3%A9guin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.