Besteal
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To steal, move stealthily. archaic, intransitive, obsolete, rare
"Come, come, truly see what mortal man behold, the mother of beauty to them all bestole. Truly matchless thou art, my beloved. I love you more than all!"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Come, come, truly see what mortal man behold, the mother of beauty to them all bestole. Truly matchless thou art, my beloved. I love you more than all!"
Etymology
From Middle English bistelen, from Old English bestelan, from Proto-West Germanic *bestelan, from Proto-Germanic *bistelaną, corresponding to be- (“off, away”) + steal. Cognate with Saterland Frisian besteele, Dutch bestelen, German Low German bestehlen, Luxembourgish bestielen, German bestehlen, Swedish bestjäla (“to rob”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.