betray
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /bɪˈtɹeɪ/
ipa: /bəˈtɹeɪ/
rhymes: -eɪ
Forms: form: betrays
form: betraying
form: betrayed
form: betrayed
Etymology: From Middle English betrayen, bitrayen (“to commit an act of treason against”), equivalent to be- + tray (“to betray”).
further etymology information
Middle English bi- is from Old English be- (“be-”), from Proto-Germanic *bi- (“be-”), from Proto-Germanic *bi (“near, by”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi (“at, near”). Compare also traitor, treason, tradition. The modern sense “to disclose, discover, reveal unintentionally” is due to influence from or merger with English bewray (“to reveal, divulge”), which is similar in sound and meaning. The similarity with German betrügen, Dutch bedriegen, from Proto-West Germanic *bidreugan (“to betray, deceive”), is coincidental.
Senses: examples: text: An officer betrayed the city.
glosses: To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly.
examples: text: to betray a person or a cause
text: Quresh betrayed Sunil to marry Nuzhat.
text: My eyes have been betraying me since I turned sixty.
text: I maruell I heare no nevves of Dromio, either hee ſlackes the matter, or betraies his Maiſter, I dare not motion anie thing to Stellio, till I knovv vvhat my boy hath don, Ile hunt him out, if the loiterſacke be gone ſpringing into a Tauerne, Ile fetch him reeling out.
ref: c. 1590 (date written), [John Lyly], Mother Bombie. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby, published 1598, →OCLC, Act II, scene ii:
glosses: To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive.
glosses: To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known.
examples: text: The dead leap at the throat, destroy
The meaning of the day; dark forms
Have scaled your walls, and spies betray
Old secrets to amorphous swarms.
ref: 1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 4:
glosses: To disclose (a secret, etc.) in deliberate violation of someone’s confidence.
examples: text: Though he had lived in England for many years, a faint accent betrayed his Swedish origin.
text: Jones’ sad eyes betray a pervasive pain his purposefully spare dialogue only hints at, while the perfectly cast [Josh] Brolin conveys hints of playfulness and warmth while staying true to the craggy stoicism at the character’s core.
ref: 2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The A.V. Club:
text: Again, to take a less extreme example, there is no denying that although the dialects of northern France retained their fundamentally Romance character, they betray many Germanic influences in phonetics and vocabulary, […]
ref: 1966, Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch, French rural history:
glosses: To disclose or indicate, for example something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally.
glosses: To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen; to lead into error or sin.
glosses: To lead astray; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.
Synonyms: sense: to prove faithless or treacherous
word: sell
sense: to disclose
word: give away
Derived terms: word: betrayable
word: betrayal
word: betrayee
word: betrayer
word: betrayment
word: rebetray
word: unbetray