Word.ws English Dictionary

bestead

bestead verb: to help, assist.

Verb (1)

bestead (third-person singular simple present besteads, present participle besteading, simple past besteaded, past participle bestead)

  1. (transitive) To help, assist.
    • She indifferently makes profit of all; even errours and dreames, doe profitably beſteade-her, as a loyall matter, to bring-vs vnto ſafetie and contentment.1603, Michel de Montaigne, “That the taste of goods or evilles doth greatly depend on the opinion we have of them”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes...
    • And they ſhall paſſe thꝛough it, hardly beſtead and hungry: and it ſhall come to paſſe, that when they ſhall be hungry, they ſhall fret themſelues, and curſe their King, and their God, and looke vpward.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 8:21, signature [Mmm4], verso, column 1
    Synonyms:
    aid
  2. (transitive) To profit; benefit; serve; avail.
    • With forty sous which remained, he went to a low gambling house, where fortune, or something surer to the skilful practitioner, so well besteaded him that he was able to clothe himself decently preparatory to entering Frascati's, the fashionable hell of Paris—a den of abomination early suppressed...1859, Southern literary messenger, volume 28
    • Abstract thought besteads immortality only in order that it may kill me as an individual being with an individual existence, and so make me immortal, pretty much in the same way as that famous physician in one of Holberg's plays,[…].2007, Miguel De Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life
    Synonyms:
    bestand

Verb (2)

bestead (third-person singular simple present besteads, present participle besteading, simple past and past participle besteaded)

  1. (transitive) To take the place of; replace.

Adjective

bestead (not comparable)

  1. (archaic) Placed (in a given situation); beset.
    • "I was indeed hard bestead, sir," burst in Oliver.1897, Jeanie Gould Lincoln, An Unwilling Maid
  2. (obsolete) Disposed mentally; affected.
    • sorrowfully bestead
  3. (obsolete) Provided; furnished.

bestead meaning in Tamil

bestead in Tamil

உதவு, துணைசெய், இடர்தணி, பயன்படு, பயனடை, நலமந்தருவதாயிரு

Synonyms of bestead

Forms of bestead

third-person singular presentbesteads
present participlebesteading
pastbesteaded
past participlebestead
alternative formbested
past participlebesteaded

Origin of bestead

From be- + stead (“to support, help”).

From Middle English bisteden; equivalent to be- + stead (“place”).

From Middle English bistad; equivalent to be- + Old Norse staddr (“placed”), later assimilated to Etymology 1, above.

Words formed from bestead

Words that rhyme with bestead

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bestead

What does bestead mean?
Bestead means to help, assist.
What is bestead in Tamil?
Bestead in Tamil is உதவு, துணைசெய், இடர்தணி. See Bestead meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bestead?
Bestead can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of bestead?
The past tense of bestead is besteaded.

Words near bestead in the dictionary

  1. bestars
  2. bestatin
  3. bestatued
  4. bestay
  5. Beste
  6. bestead
  7. besteaded
  8. besteading
  9. besteads
  10. besteal
  11. bestealing

Source and license

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