betray

Verb

betray (third-person singular simple present betrays, present participle betraying, simple past and past participle betrayed)

1. (transitive) To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly.
   • An officer betrayed the city.
   • He betrayed his own sister to the secret police.
2. (transitive) To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive.
   • to betray a person or a cause
   • Quresh betrayed Sunil to marry Nuzhat.

   Synonyms:

   sell, quisle, traitorize

3. (transitive) To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known.
4. (transitive) To disclose (a secret, etc.) in deliberate violation of someone’s confidence.
   • The dead leap at the throat, destroy
     The meaning of the day; dark forms
     Have scaled your walls, and spies betray
     Old secrets to amorphous swarms.1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 4

   Synonyms:

   give away

5. (transitive) To disclose or indicate, for example something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally.
   • Though he had lived in England for many years, a faint accent betrayed his Swedish origin.
   • Jones’ sad eyes betray a pervasive pain his purposefully spare dialogue only hints at, while the perfectly cast [Josh] Brolin conveys hints of playfulness and warmth while staying true to the craggy stoicism at the character’s core.2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The A.V. Club

   Synonyms:

   give away

6. (transitive) To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen; to lead into error or sin.
7. (transitive) To lead astray; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.