Word.ws English Dictionary

befight

befight verb: to deprive of by fighting.

Verb

befight (third-person singular simple present befights, present participle befighting, simple past and past participle befought)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To deprive of by fighting.
  2. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To fight against; contend; do battle with.

Forms of befight

third-person singular presentbefights
present participlebefighting
past participlebefought
pastbefought

Origin of befight

From Middle English *befighten, *befeghten, from Old English befeohtan (“to take by fighting”), equivalent to be- + fight. Cognate with Dutch bevechten (“to fight, combat”), Middle High German bevehten.

Questions about befight

What does befight mean?
Befight means to deprive of by fighting.
What part of speech is befight?
Befight is a verb.
What is the past tense of befight?
The past tense of befight is befought.

Words near befight in the dictionary

  1. befevered
  2. befezzed
  3. befie
  4. befied
  5. befies
  6. befight
  7. befile
  8. befiled
  9. befiles
  10. befiling
  11. befilleted

Source and license

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