behove
Part of speech: verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English behoven, bihoven (“to be necessary, requisite; to be compelled or required (to do something)”), from Old English behōfian (“to need; to be necessary”), from Proto-Germanic *bihōfōną (“to benefit, behove, need”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to grab, seize”). The word is cognate with Old Frisian bihōvia (“to need”), Middle Low German behôven (“to need”) and Old Saxon *bihōvōn, Dutch behoeven (“to need”), obsolete German behufen (cf. Behuf), Danish behøve (“to need”), Norwegian behøve (“to need”), Swedish behöva (“to have use for, to need”).
Inflected forms:
form: behoves
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: behoving
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: behoved
pos: verb
tags: past
form: behoved
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: behoven
pos: verb
tags: archaic
participle
past
form: behoove
pos: verb
tags: alternative
US
Senses:
gloss: To befit, to suit.
pos: verb
tags: formal
transitive
examples: [W]here therefore public diversions are tolerated, it behoves persons of distinction, with their power and example, to preside over them in such a manner as to check any thing that tends to the corruption of manners, or which is too mean or trivial for the entertainment of reasonable creatures.
It behoves every man, who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; it behoves him too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which laws have left between God and himself.
I never over Horeb heard / The blast of advent blow; / No fire-faced prophet brought me word / Which way behoved me go.
True, it ill behoves national newspaper columnists and MPs, let alone Prime Ministers, to start pontificating about how men – and hitherto a too tiny handful of women – shouldn't be paid £30,000 a year to risk their lives by going into burning buildings when everybody else is leaving them.
Nor does it behove western commentators whose countries are occupying Iraq to lay down conditions for those opposing it.
gloss: To be necessary for (someone).
pos: verb
tags: formal
transitive
examples: Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
gloss: To be in the best interest of; to benefit.
pos: verb
tags: formal
transitive
examples: Seeing by the late alliance termed the Rhenish Confederacy, that Louis, King of France, has the most cunning and diabolic intentions on the Imperial Crown, thereby behoving all Germans to unite in a band of brotherhood.
gloss: To be needful, meet or becoming.
pos: verb
tags: formal
intransitive
examples: It behooved that the Sonne of God suld descend unto us, and tak himselfe a bodie of our bodie, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bones, and so become the Mediator betwixt God and man, giving power to so many as beleeve in him, to be the sonnes of God; […]
Related words: behoof
behoveful
behovely
Derived words: behovable
behoovable
behoveful
behovingly
unbehoving
Translations: