Word.ws English Dictionary

beath

/biːð/

beath verb: to bathe (with warm liquid); foment.

Verb

beath (third-person singular simple present beaths, present participle beathing, simple past and past participle beathed)

  1. (dialectal, transitive) To bathe (with warm liquid); foment.
    • And in his hand a tall young oake he bore,
      Whose knottie snags were sharpned all afore,
      And beath'd in fire for steel to be in sted1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To dry or heat (unseasoned) wood for the purpose of straightening it.

Forms of beath

third-person singular presentbeaths
present participlebeathing
past participlebeathed
pastbeathed

Origin of beath

From Middle English bethen, from Old English beþian, beþigean, beþþan, bæþþan (“to heat, warm, foment, wash, cherish; bathe”), from Proto-West Germanic *baþþjan, *baþigōn, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₁- (“to warm”). Cognate with Middle Dutch betten, bessen (“to moisten with hot water, humidify”).

Words that rhyme with beath

Questions about beath

What does beath mean?
Beath means to bathe (with warm liquid); foment.
What part of speech is beath?
Beath is a verb.
How do you pronounce beath?
Beath is pronounced /biːð/.
What is the past tense of beath?
The past tense of beath is beathed.

Words near beath in the dictionary

  1. beaterman
  2. beatermen
  3. beaters
  4. beatest
  5. beateth
  6. beath
  7. beathed
  8. beathing
  9. beaths
  10. beati
  11. beatier

Source and license

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