Word.ws English Dictionary

beclip

beclip verb: to fold in the arms; embrace; clasp.

Verb (1)

beclip (third-person singular simple present beclips, present participle beclipping, simple past and past participle beclipped)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To fold in the arms; embrace; clasp.
    • At the coming of Jupiter many Tears were wept for joy, by Dame Cibel and Vesc. Cibel kist and beclipt oftentimes her Son;1702, Raoul Lefèvre, The Destruction of Troy
    • Which thing was told to the king by the same Hulin, and anon the king had pity on the poor man, and disdained not, but took him on his shoulders and bare him, whom the cripple beclipped with his foul and scabby hands and arms, and so, n the bearing, his sinews loosed and were reached out.1900, Jacobus (de Voragine) William Caxton, Frederick Startridge Ellis, The Golden Legend: Or, Lives of the Saints - Volume 4, page 15
  2. (transitive) To wrap around; enclose; encircle; surround.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To include; comprise; comprehend; contain.
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To lay hold of; seize upon; grip; catch; overtake.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To curdle (milk).

Verb (2)

beclip (third-person singular simple present beclips, present participle beclipping, simple past and past participle beclipped)

  1. (transitive) To clip around or about (the edges of); crop.
    • beclip a photograph

Forms of beclip

third-person singular presentbeclips
present participlebeclipping
past participlebeclipped
pastbeclipped

Origin of beclip

From Middle English beclippen, from Old English beclyppan (“to clip, clasp, embrace, enfold”), from Proto-Germanic *bi- (“be-”) + *klumpijaną (“to hold, clench”), from Proto-Indo-European *glemb-, *glembʰ- (“to hold, clench”), equivalent to be- + clip. Compare also Middle English umbeclippen (“to embrace”). See also umbeclip.

From be- + clip.

Words formed from beclip

Questions about beclip

What does beclip mean?
Beclip means to fold in the arms; embrace; clasp.
What part of speech is beclip?
Beclip is a verb.
What is the past tense of beclip?
The past tense of beclip is beclipped.

Words near beclip in the dictionary

  1. beclimbed
  2. beclimbing
  3. beclimbs
  4. beclin
  5. beclins
  6. beclip
  7. beclipped
  8. beclipping
  9. beclips
  10. becloak
  11. becloaked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beclip (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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