Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use behoove in a sentence

10 example sentences · verb

Behoove means to befit, be appropriate or necessary to somebody. Alternative form of behove. Example: “It ill behooves my mother to complain.”

Examples of behoove by meaning

verbTo befit, be appropriate or necessary to somebody. Alternative form of behove.

  • It ill behooves my mother to complain.
  • I think it ill behooves the Government of Canada, let alone all the people like us in Canada, to pretend that there are not these distinctions in how each of us approaches questions of security.2002 May 9, Douglas Roche, “Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade: Evidence [37th Parliament, 1st session, meeting...
  • Baker, “as in ‘It behooves us to raise our hands before we ask a question’.2007, Gary D. Schmidt, “May”, in The Wednesday Wars, New York, N.Y.: Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 208

More sentences with behoove

  • And like everything else that's increasingly scarce, it behooves us to hoard our stash.2025 February 2, Charles Hugh Smith, Begging Bowl '25: I'm Looking for Two Readers Willing to Help Me Buy a New Thrift-Store Shirt. From the entry honesty
  • It behooves us to hiate a moment and inspect the bottle-tipper in front of her.2020, Wilyem Clark, Monuments in the Dusk, page 90. From the entry hiate
  • It behooves the house officer to become familiar with a small number of drugs representing the various categories of effect and mechanism.2012, John A. Elefteriades, Curtis Tribble, Alexander S. Geha, House Officer's Guide to ICU Care, →ISBN. From the entry house officer
  • It behooves any revolutionaries, educational or other, to consider all problems and consequences before they start tearing up the social pea patch.1995, Murray Newton Rothbard, Making Economic Sense, page 158. From the entry pea patch
  • It behooves the mite to get to the sea as soon as possible, but how can it know which way to go?1960, Clifford Hillhouse Pope, The Reptile World, Knopf, page 108. From the entry turtlet
  • Now it behooves me as it has never behooven me before, to bid you farewell with the warning, “Don’t let this happen to you.”1954, “Class Prophecy”, in The Beacon, Boston, Mass.: Suffolk University. From the entry behooven
  • This is their doom that here in sin Lie and their sins will not cease; But would they think about Judgment Day, It behooves them to leave their plightful play.1965, Francis X. Corrigan, Middle English readings in translation. From the entry plightful

Meaning of behoove

  1. verb To befit, be appropriate or necessary to somebody. Alternative form of behove.
  2. verb To be fitting.

Full definition of behoove

Questions about behoove in a sentence

How do you use behoove in a sentence?
Behoove is used as a verb. For example: “It ill behooves my mother to complain.”
What is a short sentence with behoove?
“It ill behooves my mother to complain.”
What does behoove mean?
Behoove means to befit, be appropriate or necessary to somebody. Alternative form of behove.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: behoove (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use behoove in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/behoove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.