betaken

Verb

betake (third-person singular simple present betakes, present participle betaking, simple past betook, past participle betaken)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To take over to; take across (to); deliver.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To seize; lay hold of; take.
   • a rain-cloud [...] had betaken a dusky brown color, and about its lower verge a fringe of fine straight lines of rain was suggested [...].1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 194
3. (literary, reflexive) To take oneself to; go or move; repair; resort; have recourse.
   • One morning as I lay in my bed, a ſtrong motion vvas ſuddenly glanced into my thoughts of going to London; I aroſe and betook me to the vvay, […]a. 1657, Joseph Hall, “Observations on Some Specialties of Divine Providence in the Life of Jos. Hall, Bishop of Norwich”, in The Shaking of the Olive-Tree. The Remaining Works of that Incomparable...
4. (archaic, reflexive) To commit to a specified action.
5. (archaic, transitive) To commend or entrust to; to commit to.
6. (archaic, intransitive, often, poetic) To take oneself.
   • Then do no further goe, no further stray, / But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake, / Th'ill to preuent, that life ensewen may. / For what hath life, that may it loued make, / And giues not rather cause it to forsake?1590, Edmund Spenser, Canto IX, in The Faerie Queene, Book I, Stanza 44, lines 1–5

See all 7 meanings of betake