Word.ws English Dictionary

besully

besully verb: to make sullied or soiled; defile.

Verb

besully (third-person singular simple present besullies, present participle besullying, simple past and past participle besullied)

  1. (transitive) To make sullied or soiled; defile.
    • Let us avoid them as we would those emissaries of Satan whose glory is to wither piety, to blot out godliness from the ... who would extinguish the “Light of the Week”—who would besully the “Pearl of Days”—[…]1865, Robert Gillan, The Decalogue: a Series of Discourses on the Ten Commandments
    Synonyms:
    bedirty, befile, blemish, sully, assoil, beclart, bedaub, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befilth

Synonyms of besully

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of besully

third-person singular presentbesullies
present participlebesullying
past participlebesullied
pastbesullied

Origin of besully

From Middle English bisulien, from Old English besylian (“to soil, stain”), equivalent to be- + sully.

Questions about besully

What does besully mean?
Besully means to make sullied or soiled; defile.
What part of speech is besully?
Besully is a verb.
What is the past tense of besully?
The past tense of besully is besullied.

Words near besully in the dictionary

  1. besuited
  2. besuiting
  3. besuits
  4. besullied
  5. besullies
  6. besully
  7. besullying
  8. besulpamide
  9. besung
  10. beswaddle
  11. beswarm

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: besully (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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