Word of the Day:
betoken
What It Means
To signify by some visible object; show by signs or tokens.
To foreshow by present signs; indicate something in the future by that which is seen or known.
Betoken in Context
“Since the Report was published there has been a rather unnatural absence of follow-up propaganda for the Liner trains, which seems to betoken a disinclination to embark on the heavy expenditure involved until a long-term patronage of the projected services has been assured.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English bitoknen, bitacnen, from Old English betācnian (“to betoken, signify, designate”), from Proto-West Germanic *bitaiknijan. Equivalent to be- + token. Cognate with Dutch betekenen (“to mean, signify”), German bezeichnen (“to call, designate”), Swedish beteckna (“to represent, designate, indicate”) and Danish betegne (“to represent, designate, indicate”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: betoken (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “betoken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/betoken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
