Word.ws English Dictionary

behear

behear verb: to give ear to; hear (intently); attend (to); pay attention or give heed to; listen to.

Verb

behear (third-person singular simple present behears, present participle behearing, simple past and past participle beheard)

  1. (dated, transitive) To give ear to; hear (intently); attend (to); pay attention or give heed to; listen to.
    • All that beheard three witty young men, 'Twas Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, […]1826, Robin Hood, (Please provide the book title or journal name)
    • In some incidental way he beheard him of the poor widow's difficulty, and at once the manhood in him asserted itself.1877, The Sunday magazine

Examples of behear in a sentence

  • "The good Lord behear!" he exclaimed, stood stock-still for a moment, and waddled off at top speed towards the back door.1897, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, The novels and tales of Robert Louis Stevenson:
  • All that beheard his little footepage, As he watered his masters steed […]1901, A Book of romantic ballads
  • Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade!1911, Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Brother Copas:
  • A' this beheard a little footpage, Fast hid ahind a tree; An' he's awa' to seek his laird, Sae fast as he can hie.1923, H. P. Lovecraft, The Conservative:

Forms of behear

third-person singular presentbehears
present participlebehearing
past participlebeheard
pastbeheard

Origin of behear

From be- (“at, about”) + hear. Cognate with Scots behere, behear (“to hear, hear our cry”), West Frisian beheare (“to administer; manage”), Dutch behoren (“to belong”).

Questions about behear

What does behear mean?
Behear means to give ear to; hear (intently); attend (to); pay attention or give heed to; listen to.
How do you use behear in a sentence?
"The good Lord behear!" he exclaimed, stood stock-still for a moment, and waddled off at top speed towards the back door.
What part of speech is behear?
Behear is a verb.
What is the past tense of behear?
The past tense of behear is beheard.

Words near behear in the dictionary

  1. beheading
  2. beheadings
  3. beheadment
  4. beheadphoned
  5. beheads
  6. behear
  7. beheard
  8. behearing
  9. behearken
  10. behears
  11. beheart

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: behear (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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