Word.ws English Dictionary

bespeak

/bɪˈspiːk/

bespeak verb: to speak about; tell of; relate; discuss.

Verb

bespeak (third-person singular simple present bespeaks, present participle bespeaking, simple past bespoke or (archaic) bespake, past participle bespoken or (archaic) bespoke)

  1. (archaic, formal, transitive) To speak about; tell of; relate; discuss.
    • [They] bespoke dangers […] in order to scare the allies.1711, Jonathan Swift, The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3, The Examiner, Number 44, page 244
  2. (dated, transitive) To speak for beforehand; engage in advance; make arrangements for; order, commission, reserve or arrange for something to be made in advance.
    • '[…] I am come here to bespeak Fanny a seal […]'1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XI, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume II, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC
    • concluding, naturally, that to gratify his avarice was to bespeak his favour1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co....
  3. (transitive) To stipulate, solicit, ask for, or request, as in a favour.
    • to bespeak a calm hearing
    • I bespeak your patience in advance.
  4. (archaic, transitive) To forbode; foretell.
  5. (archaic, poetic, transitive) To speak to; address.
    • Then ſtaring on her with a ghaſtly Look, / And hollow Voice, he thus the Queen beſpoke.1717, John Dryden, “Book XI. [The House of Sleep.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 401
    • Spurring his horse, he galloped down to the shore and bespoke them.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 23
  6. (transitive) To betoken; show; indicate; depict; foretell; suggest; allude to.
    • This act bespeaks his kindness.
    • When the abbot of St. Martin was born, he had so little the figure of a man that it bespake him rather a monster.1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 3, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC
  7. (intransitive) To speak up or out; exclaim; speak.

Noun

bespeak (plural bespeaks)

  1. (archaic) A request for a specific performance; a benefit performance, by a patron.
    • "By the bye, I've been thinking of bringing out that piece of yours on her bespeak night."
      "When?" asked Nicholas.
      "The night of her bespeak. Her benefit night. When her friends and patrons bespeak the play."
      "Oh! I understand," replied Nicholas.1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC

bespeak meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

bespeak in Bengali

নির্দেশ করা, ইঙ্গিত দেওয়া, আগে থেকে বুক করা

bespeak in Malayalam

denote, indicate, be evidence of
സൂചിപ്പിക്കുക, സൂചനകമായിരിക്കുക, സൂചന നൽകുക, തെളിവായിരിക്കുക, അടയാളമായിരിക്കുക, അനുമാനത്തിനു വഴി നല്കുക
reserve, order, book
പറഞ്ഞുവയ്ക്കുക, ചട്ടം കെട്ടുക, ഏർപ്പാടു ചെയ്തുവയ്ക്കുക, മുൻകൂട്ടി ഏർപ്പാടാക്കിവയ്ക്കുക, സംവരണം ചെയ്ക, മുൻകൂർ ഏർപ്പാടു ചെയ്യുക

Examples of bespeak in a sentence

  • It bespeaks the possibilities of ethnic identification and acculturation which are not automatically tied with racial appearance.
  • This need to shelter the ultra rich bespeaks unacceptably high real levels of insecurity which beset the middle and working classes.
  • On “Train” it displays heavy-metal flair, and the singer Brad Arnold achieves a blueslike informality that bespeaks his Mississippi roots.

All 13 example sentences with bespeak

Synonyms of bespeak

All synonyms of bespeak

Forms of bespeak

Verb
third-person singular presentbespeaks
present participlebespeaking
pastbespoke
past participlebespoken
past (archaic)bespake
past participle (archaic)bespoke
Noun
pluralbespeaks

Past tense of bespeak: bespoke

Origin of bespeak

From Middle English bespeken, bispeken, from Old English *bespecan, besprecan (“to speak about, speak against, accuse of, claim at law, complain”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisprekan (“to discuss, blame”), from Proto-Germanic *bisprekaną (“to speak about, discuss, blame”), equivalent to be- + speak. Cognate with Scots bespeke (“to beseech, speak or negotiate with”), Saterland Frisian bispreke (“to discuss”), West Frisian besprekke (“to discuss”), Dutch bespreken (“to discuss, review, debate”), German besprechen (“to discuss, review, talk about”).

Words formed from bespeak

Words that rhyme with bespeak

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bespeak

What does bespeak mean?
Bespeak means to speak about; tell of; relate; discuss.
What is bespeak in Bengali?
Bespeak in Bengali is নির্দেশ করা, ইঙ্গিত দেওয়া, আগে থেকে বুক করা. See Bespeak meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is bespeak?
Bespeak can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce bespeak?
Bespeak is pronounced /bɪˈspiːk/.
What is the past tense of bespeak?
The past tense of bespeak is bespoke.

Words near bespeak in the dictionary

  1. bespauls
  2. bespawl
  3. bespawled
  4. bespawling
  5. bespawls
  6. bespeak
  7. bespeakable
  8. bespeaker
  9. bespeakers
  10. bespeakest
  11. bespeaketh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bespeak (page history and authors); bespeak (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bespeak (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bespeak.wav.

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