Word.ws English Dictionary

beken

/bɪˈkɛn/

beken verb: to make known; reveal.

Verb

beken (third-person singular simple present bekens, present participle bekenning, simple past and past participle bekenned or bekent)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To make known; reveal.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To deliver.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To commit or commend to the care of.
    • Now I bikenne þe criste quod she · and his clene moder.c. 1385, William Langland, Piers Plowman, section II
  4. (Scotland, transitive) To commit.
  5. (Scotland, transitive) To admit as possessor.
  6. (Scotland, transitive) To acquaint; instruct.

Forms of beken

third-person singular presentbekens
present participlebekenning
past participlebekenned
pastbekenned
past participlebekent
pastbekent

Origin of beken

From Middle English bekennen, bikennen, equivalent to be- + ken (“to perceive”). Cognate with Dutch bekennen (“to acknowledge, confess”), German bekennen (“to admit, confess”), Swedish bekänna (“to profess, confess”).

Questions about beken

What does beken mean?
Beken means to make known; reveal.
What part of speech is beken?
Beken is a verb.
How do you pronounce beken?
Beken is pronounced /bɪˈkɛn/.
What is the past tense of beken?
The past tense of beken is bekenned.

Words near beken in the dictionary

  1. bekas
  2. bekase
  3. Bekasi
  4. Bekele
  5. Bekeles
  6. beken
  7. bekenned
  8. bekenning
  9. bekens
  10. Bekenstein
  11. Bekenstein bound

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beken (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.

Last updated:

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