Word.ws English Dictionary

bereaves

bereaves is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bereave.

Meaning of bereave

Verb

bereave (third-person singular simple present bereaves, present participle bereaving, simple past and past participle bereaved or bereft)

  1. (transitive) To deprive by or as if by violence; to rob; to strip.
    • Madam, you have bereft me of all words,c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To take away by destroying, impairing, or spoiling; take away by violence.
    • All your interest in those territories / Is utterly bereft you; all is lost.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  3. (transitive) To deprive of power; prevent.
  4. (transitive) To take away someone or something that is important or close; deprive.
    • Death bereaved him of his wife.
  5. (intransitive, rare) To destroy life; cut off.

Questions about bereaves

What is bereaves the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Bereaves is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bereave.

Words near bereaves in the dictionary

  1. bereavement
  2. bereavements
  3. bereaven
  4. bereaver
  5. bereavers
  6. bereaves
  7. bereavest
  8. bereaveth
  9. bereaving
  10. BEREC
  11. Berecynthia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bereaves (page history and authors); bereave (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: “bereaves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bereaves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.