Word.ws English Dictionary

betell

betell verb: to speak or tell about; declare; narrate; describe.

Verb

betell (third-person singular simple present betells, present participle betelling, simple past and past participle betold)

  1. (transitive) To speak or tell about; declare; narrate; describe.
    • Occasionally we do see some short-line road whose track and equipment are kept in such good repair as to betell of exceptional prosperity; […]1938, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (U.S.), Locomotive engineers journal
    • Sid's face disappeared and one of his cursed Gods was glaring instead, through gouged-out sockets that betold of his having loved that which was denied him, a law that not even legends could do away with.2001, Donna Morrissey, Kit's Law: A Novel
  2. (transitive) To speak for; answer for; justify.
  3. (transitive) To lay claim to; win; rescue.
  4. (rare, transitive) To talk about negatively; slander; calumniate; deride; deceive.

Forms of betell

third-person singular presentbetells
present participlebetelling
past participlebetold
pastbetold

Origin of betell

From Middle English betellen (“to tell about, calumniate”), from Old English betellan (“to speak about, answer, defend oneself against a charge or accusation”), equivalent to be- (“about, concerning”) + tell.

Questions about betell

What does betell mean?
Betell means to speak or tell about; declare; narrate; describe.
What part of speech is betell?
Betell is a verb.
What is the past tense of betell?
The past tense of betell is betold.

Words near betell in the dictionary

  1. Betelgeusean
  2. Betelgeuseans
  3. Betelgeusian
  4. Betelgeusians
  5. Betelguez
  6. betell
  7. betellee
  8. betellees
  9. betelling
  10. betells
  11. betelnut

Source and license

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