Word.ws English Dictionary

bewake

bewake verb: to watch; keep watch over; guard.

Verb

bewake (third-person singular simple present bewakes, present participle bewaking, simple past and past participle bewaked)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To watch; keep watch over; guard.
  2. (transitive) To awaken thoroughly; keep awake.
  3. (transitive) To spend waking; watch through.
  4. (intransitive) To keep awake; watch.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To watch over (a body); observe funeral rites for.

Forms of bewake

third-person singular presentbewakes
present participlebewaking
past participlebewaked
pastbewaked

Origin of bewake

From Middle English bewaken (“to watch”), from Old English bewacian (“to watch, keep watch over”), equivalent to be- + wake. Cognate with Dutch bewaken, German bewachen, Swedish bevaka, Danish bevåge.

Questions about bewake

What does bewake mean?
Bewake means to watch; keep watch over; guard.
What part of speech is bewake?
Bewake is a verb.
What is the past tense of bewake?
The past tense of bewake is bewaked.

Words near bewake in the dictionary

  1. bewailings
  2. bewailment
  3. bewailments
  4. bewails
  5. bewaistcoated
  6. bewake
  7. bewallow
  8. bewander
  9. bewandered
  10. bewandering
  11. bewanders

Source and license

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