bestrew
Americanverb (used with object)
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bestrews,
present (3rd person singular)
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bestrewed,
past participle, past
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bestrewn,
past participle
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bestrewing
present participle
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to strew or cover (a surface).
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to strew or scatter about.
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to lie scattered over.
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bestrewsimple
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bestrewssimple
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have bestrewedperfect
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have bestrewnperfect
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has bestrewedperfect
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has bestrewnperfect
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am bestrewingprogressive
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are bestrewingprogressive
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is bestrewingprogressive
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have been bestrewingperfect progressive
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has been bestrewingperfect progressive
Past
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bestrewedsimple
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had bestrewedperfect
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had bestrewnperfect
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was bestrewingprogressive
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were bestrewingprogressive
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had been bestrewingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bestrew
before 1000; Middle English bistrewen, Old English bestrēowian. See be-, strew
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Tears will bedew, if wigs do not bestrew the green.”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 19, 2017
More than a decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, concrete security barriers still bestrew the east side of 23rd Street NW.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 12, 2015
Uprooted trees, torn chunks of pavement and twisted iron fences bestrew the roadsides.
From Time Magazine Archive
Later ages view the matter as of no importance; and the lives that are lost in the struggle are as forgotten as the multitudinous leaves which bestrew the ground of an autumnal forest.
From Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters
Crush'd hopes, like withered leaves, bestrew thy way!
From Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 by Various
It is safe to say that Richardson would have delivered a more nuanced movie—his Mahogany would undoubtedly have avoided the camp that bestrews the Gordy version.
From Slate ● Oct. 29, 2015
We depart—the only two living beings to be seen in that unreal and miasmal place, that village which bestrews the earth and lies under our feet.
From Under Fire: the story of a squad by Fitzwater Wray
So might it be possible to ascribe to particular months the tokens with which the obliging sea bestrews the beaches.
From Tropic Days by E. J. (Edmund James) Banfield
Branches of bloom-laden bird-cherry trees peep in at my window, and now and again the breeze bestrews my writing-table with their white petals.
From A Hero of Our Time by J. H. Wisdom
Lafayette Square, bestrewed with garbage and covered with graffiti, looked terrible in the images that emerged, and the president didn’t look much better.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 2, 2020
Why, Daedalus wondered, are the world’s cities bestrewed with graffiti even though scientists, years ago, had perfected the porcelain enamel surfaces that make self-cleaning ovens possible?
From New York Times ● Jul. 30, 2017
Their bestrewed compositions also owe a debt to Pollock’s allover paintings — so much for abstraction denied.
From New York Times ● Mar. 12, 2015
Not only was Flappy Bird by far the No. 1 free app on both the iPhone and Android app stores, but blatant rip-offs like Flappy Plane, Fly Birdie, and Ironpants bestrewed the top 50.
From Slate ● Feb. 10, 2014
They threw up rat-fur in the air; They piled up rat-tails everywhere; And slaughtered rats bestrewed the ground For ten or twenty miles around.
From Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse by Edwin Carty Ranck
Some he depicted as he saw them, bestrewn with marble stumps and fallen capitals.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2017
What had set me off on this track, a track that became narrower and narrower and finally petered out in a field bestrewn with burdocks and cow pats?
From The Guardian ● Jun. 22, 2013
A brownish-green carpet of moss and grass spread over the plain, bestrewn with flowers of rare beauty.
From Farthest North Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 Vol. I by Fridtjof Nansen
At one view I comprehended this—I read it in the aperture sawn through the doubled planking, and in the fragments of casks and cases with which the ice was bestrewn around.
From Mathieu Ropars: et cetera by William Young
Away I went into the thick darkness of the men's dirty cave, groping my way into its innermost recesses among the bags, chests, and beds with which the deck was bestrewn.
From The Log of a Sea-Waif Being Recollections of the First Four Years of My Sea Life by Frank T. Bullen
He conveyed the impression that the collection of documents, books, telephones, and other paraphernalia bestrewing his table had reduced him to a state of stupor.
From Dope by Sax Rohmer
What is all this about bestrewing the body?
From Yiddish Tales by Various
The casement opened, and first appeared a fair hand, which, with a long tapering jug of blue and white Dutch porcelain, was bestrewing water upon the flowers in the little wooden balcony.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845 by Various
"Thou dost know that the china-packer comes early to-morrow morn, and that e'en now the barrels and boxes and excelsior are bestrewing the dining room?"
From Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
More perilous even than these animals, to the wanderer in the forest, are the innumerable serpents that lurk beneath the accumulation of dead leaves bestrewing the ground.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
