Word.ws English Dictionary

bespoken

bespoken is the past participle of bespeak.

Meaning of bespeak

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
  3. (transitive) To stipulate, solicit, ask for, or request, as in a favour.
    • to bespeak a calm hearing
  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
  6. (transitive) To betoken; show; indicate; depict; foretell; suggest; allude to.
    • This act bespeaks his kindness.

See all 8 meanings of bespeak

Adjective

bespoken (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) betrothed or engaged to be married

Words that rhyme with bespoken

Questions about bespoken

What does bespoken mean?
Bespoken means betrothed or engaged to be married.
What is bespoken the past participle of?
Bespoken is the past participle of bespeak.
What part of speech is bespoken?
Bespoken is an adjective.

Words near bespoken in the dictionary

  1. bespoiled
  2. bespoiling
  3. bespoils
  4. bespoke
  5. bespokely
  6. bespoken
  7. bespokeness
  8. Bespokoyev
  9. besport
  10. besported
  11. besporting

Source and license

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