Word.ws English Dictionary

bede

/biːd/UK/biːd/

bede noun: prayer, request, supplication.

Noun

bede (plural bedes)

  1. (obsolete) Prayer, request, supplication
    • Thus originated the alms-(or bede-) houses so frequently met with in the retired villages of England.1875 March, Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume 15, number 87
    • By Allah thy bede is good indeed and right is thy rede!1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar...
  2. (obsolete) Rosary.
    • In Pilgrimage from towne to towne: With offring and with Drilon: To them they bable on their bedes: That they may helpe them in their nedes.1566, Sir David Lindsay, A Dialogue betweene Experience and a Courtier
    • Or doe they use their Bedes alone to finde That tale of Paters which they seldome minde?1642, William Prynne, A Pleasant Purge, for a Roman Catholike, to Evacuate His Evill Humours, page 20

Verb

bede (third-person singular simple present bedes, present participle beding, simple past bade, past participle bode or boden)

  1. pray, offer, proffer
    • Sir, a bargan bede I you, / by it if ye will15th c., “Conspiracio [The Conspiracy]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI)...
  2. request, demand, order, command, forbid
  3. proclaim, declare
    • A turnement were best to bede.1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “(please specify the chapter)”, in [Le Morte Darthur], (please specify the book number), [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC...
  4. present, counsel, advise, rede, exhort
    • They of londone […] boden hem to ben lyht of herte.1450, Merlin

Proper noun capitalized: Bede

Bede

  1. An English monk, historian and theologian from Northumbria who lived from c. 673 to 753, commonly known as the Venerable Bede.

Examples of bede in a sentence

  • […] because miracles had frequently been done at his burial-place, even at the bede-house where he was buried.2008, Time to Ditch St. George:
  • These people were referred to as bede women or men, and it was they who made the first bead flowers.2011, Where Did Beaded Flowers Come From?:
  • Towards a rude hermitage he made To fetch the priest unto his need, To bury her and say her bede1870, William Morris, The Earthly Paradise:
  • Then the Little Serving Maid She went and laid her down, With her cross and her bede, In her new courting gown.1910, Hilaire Belloc, “The Little Serving Maid”, in Verses, page 39:

Forms of bede

Noun
pluralbedes
alternative formbead
Verb
third-person singular presentbedes
present participlebeding
pastbade
past participlebode
past participleboden

Origin of bede

From Middle English bēde (“prayer, request, supplication, order, command, rosary, bead”), from Old English ġebed (“prayer, petition, supplication, religious service, an ordinance”), from Proto-West Germanic *bed, from Proto-Germanic *bedą (“prayer, entreaty”). Cognate with Dutch gebed and bede, German Gebet.

From Middle English bēden (“to offer”), from Old English bēodan, from Proto-West Germanic *beudan, from Proto-Germanic *beudaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ-. Germanic cognates include Old Frisian biada, Old Saxon biodan (Low German bieden, beden), Dutch bieden, Old High German biotan (German bieten), Old Norse bjóða (Swedish bjuda (“command, show”)), Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌰𐌱𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰𐌽 (anabiudan). The Indo-European root is also the source of Ancient Greek πεύθομαι (peúthomai, “ask for”), Sanskrit बोधयति (bodhayati, “wake”), Old Church Slavonic бъдѣти (bŭděti) (Russian будить (buditʹ, “wake”)), Lithuanian budeti (“awake”). See also bid.

Words formed from bede

Words that rhyme with bede

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bede

What does bede mean?
Bede means prayer, request, supplication.
How do you use bede in a sentence?
[…] because miracles had frequently been done at his burial-place, even at the bede-house where he was buried.
What part of speech is bede?
Bede can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bede?
Bede is pronounced /biːd/ (UK).
What is the plural of bede?
The plural of bede is bedes.

Words near bede in the dictionary

  1. Beddow
  2. Beddows
  3. beddy
  4. beddy-bye
  5. beddy-byes
  6. bede
  7. bedeafen
  8. bedeafened
  9. bedeafening
  10. bedeafens
  11. bedeal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bede (page history and authors); Bede (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: “bede.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bede. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.