Word.ws English Dictionary

bete

bete is the obsolete spelling of beat.

bete is the obsolete spelling of beet.

Meaning of beat

Verb

beat (third-person singular simple present beats, present participle beating, simple past beat or (nonstandard) beated, past participle beaten or (colloquial) beat or (nonstandard) beated)

  1. (transitive) To hit; to strike.
    • As soon as she heard that her father had died, she went into a rage and beat the wall with her fists until her knuckles bled.
  2. (transitive) To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.
    • He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.
  3. (intransitive) To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.
    • […] the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 19:22
  4. (intransitive) To move with pulsation or throbbing.
    • A thousand hearts beat happily.1812–18, George Gordon Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, verse 21
  5. (transitive) To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than (someone); to excel in a particular, competitive event.
    • Jan had little trouble beating John in tennis. He lost five games in a row.
  6. (intransitive) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.

See all 46 meanings of beat

Meaning of beet

Verb

beet

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To improve; to mend.
  2. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To kindle a fire.
  3. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To rouse.

See all 6 meanings of beet

Phrases with bete

Questions about bete

What is bete the obsolete spelling of?
Bete is the obsolete spelling of beat.

Words near bete in the dictionary

  1. betches
  2. betcho
  3. betchu
  4. Betchworth
  5. betchya
  6. bete
  7. Bete Bolong
  8. Bete Bolong North
  9. beteach
  10. beteaches
  11. beteaching

Source and license

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