belive

[bih-lahyv]

adverb Scot.

before long; soon.

Origin of belive

1150–1200; Middle English bi live literally, with life, with liveliness. See by¹, life

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for belive

Contemporary Examples of belive

Michelle Obama's Biggest Fashion Regret: Belive it or not, FLOTUS too suffers from fashion remorse.
Michelle Obama's Biggest Fashion Regret; LVMH Launches Contest for Emerging Designers
The Fashion Beast Team
November 21, 2013

Historical Examples of belive

And that will lead the police to belive it was suicide you think?
Daisy Ashford: Her Book
Daisy Ashford
Ther's one Bird was my tayler and I belive has my measur, or some old cloathes of mine, that he could make them by.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745.
Mrs. Thomson
I belive his Grace's men had no good will to the work, and were brought their against their inclinations.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745.
Mrs. Thomson
They had nott then gott the account there of the King's arival, els I belive they had not atempted it.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745.
Mrs. Thomson
I trusted you sufficiently, Jones, to belive you wouldn't have brought me on a useless errand at such a time of awful anxiety.
The Catholic World. Volume III; Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
E. Rameur

Word Origin and History for belive

Old English belifan "remain," intransitive form of belæfan "cause to remain" (see beleave). A general Germanic word (cf. Gothic beleiban, Old High German biliban, German bleiben, Dutch blijven); confused in early Middle English with beleave and merged into it, which gave beleave two clashing senses ("to leave," also "to remain") which might be why the compound word, the cognate of important verbs in other Germanic languages, was abandoned in English and only leave (v.) remains.