Beswear

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To swear by; swear about or regarding; swear at or to; promise transitive

    "Some masters of the art take a pure child and set him in their lap, then lift his hand up and let him look into his nail, and beswear the child and the nail with a great adjuration, and then speak in the child's ear three unknown words, whereof one is Oriel, the others I withhold for fear of offending."

Example

More examples

"Some masters of the art take a pure child and set him in their lap, then lift his hand up and let him look into his nail, and beswear the child and the nail with a great adjuration, and then speak in the child's ear three unknown words, whereof one is Oriel, the others I withhold for fear of offending."

Etymology

From be- + swear.

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