Befile

verb

verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To make filthy; befoul; soil. dialectal, obsolete, transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
assoilbeclartbedaubbedirtybedizenbefilth

Etymology

From Middle English befilen, from Old English befȳlan (“to befoul, defile, make dirty”), from Proto-West Germanic *bifūlijan (“to make foul”), equivalent to be- + file. Cognate with Scots befile (“to befile”), West Frisian befûlje (“to dirty”), Dutch bevuilen (“to soil, dirty”), German Low German befulen (“to soil, pollute”). See also defile.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.