Word.ws English Dictionary

besleep

besleep verb: to sleep; have a sleep; sleep with.

Verb

besleep (third-person singular simple present besleeps, present participle besleeping, simple past and past participle beslept)

  1. (ambitransitive, archaic, reflexive) To sleep; have a sleep; sleep with.
    • Others are going about our streets, like well-meaning but beslept watchmen, calling the hours of midnight, while the morning is paling their lanterns.1859, George Gilfillan, The poets and poetry of the Bible
    • He still beslept himself as we passed; he being a slumbersome person.1926, Blanche Colton Williams, Best American stories

Forms of besleep

third-person singular presentbesleeps
present participlebesleeping
past participlebeslept
pastbeslept

Origin of besleep

From Middle English beslepen, from Old English beslǣpan (“to sleep, sleep through, sleep over”), equivalent to be- + sleep. Compare West Frisian besliepe (“to sleep with”), Dutch beslapen (“to sleep with”), German beschlafen (“to lay with”).

Questions about besleep

What does besleep mean?
Besleep means to sleep; have a sleep; sleep with.
What part of speech is besleep?
Besleep is a verb.
What is the past tense of besleep?
The past tense of besleep is beslept.

Words near besleep in the dictionary

  1. beslavered
  2. beslavering
  3. beslavers
  4. beslaves
  5. beslaving
  6. besleep
  7. besleeve
  8. besleeved
  9. Besler
  10. Beslers
  11. Besley

Source and license

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