Word.ws English Dictionary

beget

UK/biˈɡɛt/

beget verb: to produce or bring forth (a child); to be a parent of; to father or sire.

Verb

beget (third-person singular simple present begets, present participle begetting, simple past begot or (archaic) begat, past participle begotten or (rare) begot)

  1. (literary, transitive) To produce or bring forth (a child); to be a parent of; to father or sire.
    • The King intends to beget a child within the next five years.
    • ¶ And Adam liued an hundred and thirtie yeeres, and begate a ſonne in his owne likeneſſe, after his image; and called his name Seth.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 5:3
  2. (transitive) To cause; to produce; to bring forth.
    • Wealth begets wealth; poverty begets poverty.
    • How one’s thoughts will travel! and how quickly our wishes beget them!1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 2, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850...
    Synonyms:
    breed
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To get or obtain.
    • If there bee neuer a Seruant-monſter i' the Fayre, who can helpe it, he ſayes ; nor a neſt of Antiques ? Hee is loth to make Nature afraid in his Playes, like thoſe that beget Tales, Tempeſts, and ſuch like Drolleries, […]1614 November 10 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), Beniamin Iohnson [i.e., Ben Jonson], Bartholmew Fayre: A Comedie, […], London: […] I[ohn] B[eale] for Robert Allot, […], published 1631...
  4. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To happen to; befall.

beget meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

beget in Tamil

ஈன்றெடு, பெறு, தோற்றுவி, தோன்ற ஏதுவாயிரு, விளைவி

beget in Urdu

جننا, جنوانا

beget in Bengali

জন্ম দেওয়া

beget in Malayalam

കാരണമാകുക, ഉത്പാദിപ്പിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
beget in Kannada
ಹೆರು, ಉಂಟುಮಾಡು
beget in Sanskrit
जनयति janayati
beget in Arabic
أَنْجَبَ ʔanjaba

Examples of beget in a sentence

  • I believe good people beget good people.2003, William H. Frist, Shirley Wilson, Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page...
  • In the same way that Old Europe’s coffeehouses begat insurance companies, he says, today’s political careers beget an unhealthy relationship with throat lozenges.2012 May 5, Henry Alford, “Future TED Talks”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 May 2012:

All 20 example sentences with beget

Synonyms of beget

Forms of beget

third-person singular presentbegets
present participlebegetting
pastbegot
past participlebegotten
past (archaic)begat
past participle (rare)begot

Past tense of beget: begot

Origin of beget

From Middle English begeten [influenced by Old Norse geta ("to get, to guess")], from Old English beġietan (“to get”), from Proto-Germanic *bigetaną (“to find, seize”), equivalent to be- + get. Cognate with Old Saxon bigetan (“to find, seize”), Old High German bigezan (“to gain, achieve, win, procure”).

Words formed from beget

Words that rhyme with beget

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about beget

What does beget mean?
Beget means to produce or bring forth (a child); to be a parent of; to father or sire.
What is beget in Tamil?
Beget in Tamil is ஈன்றெடு, பெறு, தோற்றுவி. See Beget meaning in Tamil.
How do you use beget in a sentence?
I believe good people beget good people.
What part of speech is beget?
Beget is a verb.
How do you pronounce beget?
Beget is pronounced /biˈɡɛt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of beget?
The past tense of beget is begot.

Words near beget in the dictionary

  1. begemmed
  2. begemming
  3. begems
  4. begena
  5. begenas
  6. beget
  7. begets
  8. begettal
  9. begettals
  10. begetter
  11. begetters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beget (page history and authors); beget (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beget (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beget (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beget (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beget (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-beget.ogg.

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