Word.ws English Dictionary

befile

befile verb: to make filthy; befoul; soil.

Verb

befile (third-person singular simple present befiles, present participle befiling, simple past and past participle befiled)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To make filthy; befoul; soil.
    Synonyms:
    befoul, defile, foul, assoil, beclart, bedaub, bedirty, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befilth

Synonyms of befile

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of befile

third-person singular presentbefiles
present participlebefiling
past participlebefiled
pastbefiled

Origin of befile

From Middle English befilen, from Old English befȳlan (“to befoul, defile, make dirty”), from Proto-West Germanic *bifūlijan (“to make foul”), equivalent to be- + file. Cognate with Scots befile (“to befile”), West Frisian befûlje (“to dirty”), Dutch bevuilen (“to soil, dirty”), German Low German befulen (“to soil, pollute”). See also defile.

Questions about befile

What does befile mean?
Befile means to make filthy; befoul; soil.
What part of speech is befile?
Befile is a verb.
What is the past tense of befile?
The past tense of befile is befiled.

Words near befile in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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