Word.ws English Dictionary

bestream

bestream verb: to stream around, about, or all over; flood.

Verb

bestream (third-person singular simple present bestreams, present participle bestreaming, simple past and past participle bestreamed)

  1. (intransitive) To stream around, about, or all over; flood.
    • His eyes bestreamed with tears, his large heart quaking [...]1858, Henry Green, A Manchester book
  2. (transitive) To flow in a stream; stream down.
    • Merchant plays you with a smile beguiling, Wife beguiles you with her tears bestreaming, [...]1925, Milivoy Stoyan Stanoyevich, Slavonic nations of yesterday and today
    • Tears bestreamed her face, and the Elder of Midpoint was somewhat bemused at this reception.2010, Sally Odgers, Shadowdancers
  3. (transitive) To drench; mark by streams of.
    • [...] and, from using only moderate exercise, I am so bestreamed with perspiration as to make it necessary to change my clothes four or five times in the course of the day: [...]1816, George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies
    • [...] it is easy to conceive her terror when she saw my friend in this predicament, lying in my arms, and both of us bestreamed with blood.1824, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: A Novel
  4. (broadly, transitive) To cover or be covered in; adorn; wear.
    • Gear, such as Orchomenus bestreams or Thebae of Egypt, Where lies in palace-hall most wealth, whose gates are an hundred, And steeds, and chariots, and fivescore troops are in each one [...]1899, Homer, Alexander Pope, Philip Gentner, The Iliad of Homer
    • They were about the business of repair so that in a way fire did remain an enemy of water, as they caulked the longboat and disappeared below deck, carrying leather-bestreamed poles of steaming pitch.1995, C. W. E. Bigsby, Hester

Examples of bestream in a sentence

  • The collars of his serge jacket were pulled up high above his ears, making a fantastic setting for his grimy, tear-bestreamed countenance, [...]1868, Every Saturday: a journal of choice reading:
  • I do remember a poor Negro, Under the torrid sun by parching thirst Oppress'd; with sweat-bestreamed brow he slaved, Planting of sugar-canes; [...]2004, Marcus Wood, The poetry of slavery:

Forms of bestream

third-person singular presentbestreams
present participlebestreaming
past participlebestreamed
pastbestreamed

Origin of bestream

From be- + stream. Cognate with German beströmen (“to pervade”).

Questions about bestream

What does bestream mean?
Bestream means to stream around, about, or all over; flood.
How do you use bestream in a sentence?
The collars of his serge jacket were pulled up high above his ears, making a fantastic setting for his grimy, tear-bestreamed countenance, [...]
What part of speech is bestream?
Bestream is a verb.
What is the past tense of bestream?
The past tense of bestream is bestreamed.

Words near bestream in the dictionary

  1. bestraughted
  2. bestreak
  3. bestreaked
  4. bestreaking
  5. bestreaks
  6. bestream
  7. bestretched
  8. bestrew
  9. bestrewal
  10. bestrewals
  11. bestrewed

Source and license

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