bespeak
Americanverb (used with object)
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bespeaks,
present (3rd person singular)
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bespoke,
past, past participle (Archaic)
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bespake,
past (Archaic)
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bespoken,
past participle
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bespeaking
present participle
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to ask for in advance.
to bespeak the reader's patience.
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to reserve beforehand; engage in advance; make arrangements for.
to bespeak a seat in a theater.
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Literary. to speak to; address.
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to show; indicate.
This bespeaks a kindly heart.
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Obsolete. to foretell; forebode.
verb
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to engage, request, or ask for in advance
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to indicate or suggest
this act bespeaks kindness
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poetic to speak to; address
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archaic to foretell
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bespeaksimple
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bespeakssimple
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have bespokeperfect
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have bespokenperfect
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has bespokeperfect
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has bespokenperfect
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am bespeakingprogressive
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are bespeakingprogressive
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is bespeakingprogressive
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have been bespeakingperfect progressive
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has been bespeakingperfect progressive
Past
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bespakesimple
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bespokesimple
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had bespokeperfect
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had bespokenperfect
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was bespeakingprogressive
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were bespeakingprogressive
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had been bespeakingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bespeak
before 900; Middle English bespeken, Old English besprecan. See be-, speak
Explanation
To bespeak is to imply or signal something, the way your neighbor's electric car might bespeak concern for the environment. You can use this verb to mean "indicate" or "convey indirectly." Your city's excellent schools and smooth, well-cared-for streets may bespeak high taxes to people who are considering buying a house there. Your interest in foreign films and philosophy might bespeak a deep intelligence and curiosity to your teachers. And if you're really paying attention, you'll realize your friend's crankiness bespeaks her fear of starting at a new school next fall.
Vocabulary lists containing bespeak
Inquire Within: Synoynms for "Ask"
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The Portrait of a Lady
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Reveal
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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:
For the owners to even contemplate repeating that experience, especially given the heightened competition in the modern world for sports fans’ attention and viewers’ eyeballs, can bespeak only insanity or stupidity, or probably both.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
Whatever the validity of that charge, it doesn’t bespeak an administration indifferent to the fate of American political ideas abroad.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
Under dark dusk and through the rainy streets that bespeak the Old Smoke’s subpar drainage system, we ride to the Saatchi Gallery.
From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2022
Personally I am devoted to Jake, his puppyish enthusiasm, his liveliness and fleetness of non-toxic banter which all bespeak a profound purity of soul.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 9, 2019
As his eyes met mine I was suddenly moved to bespeak him, to try to reach him with the mindspeech I had never used since I landed on Winter, and should not use, yet.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
The sudden explosion of online sports betting bespeaks a nation of young men looking for ways to pocket cash for no work.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
“It bespeaks a really, really big misunderstanding,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2023
But it bespeaks a fundamental and cruel misunderstanding of autonomy and liberty rights, and a return to something far more pernicious.
From Slate ● May 10, 2022
“It creates debris all around. Most importantly, in a psychological sense, it bespeaks the fact that we can’t get basic services done, and that’s never a good message.”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 14, 2021
Fortified towns emerged in the third millennium B.C., with cemeteries whose great variation between unadorned and luxuriously furnished graves bespeaks emerging class differences.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
And then bespake Sir Bredbeddle, And these were the words said he: "Why, I will wrestle with yon lodly feend, God! my governor thou shalt bee."
From English and Scottish Ballads, Volume I (of 8) by Various
With that bespake the master brave:105 "Worshipfull master, thither goes this pretty youth, And any thing that you would have, He will performe it, and write the truth."
From English and Scottish Ballads, Volume IV by Various
X But when the queen survey'd them, and found the band so few, Thus she, amidst her fury, bespake her friends anew.
From The Nibelungenlied Revised Edition by Unknown
Then bespake him kyng Estmere, And answered him hartilye: "I knowe not that ladye in any lande,15 That is able to marry with mee."
From English and Scottish Ballads (volume 3 of 8) by Various
Then bespake Little John, To Much he 'gan say: "I dare lay my life to wed These monks have brought our pay!"
From Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse by Various
It set out to use mRNA technology to make custom-designed cancer vaccines: A person’s tumor would be genetically sequenced—the process of finding mutations—and the company would make bespoke therapeutic vaccines to stimulate the immune system.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026
Billionaire philanthropist Herbert Wertheim paid a record-setting $40 million for a bespoke Ferrari Luce at a Sotheby’s charity auction.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
So far, there is no bespoke AI regulation in the UK.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Díaz came up with the title after visiting his cousin Chef Tino’s restaurant in Isabela, Puerto Rico, where he observed his cousin create a similarly bespoke experience in his kitchen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
He introduced Bobby to his tailor in the Little Hungary section of Manhattan so that the teenager could have some bespoke suits made.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Observers wondered if the 20,000 were more acutely bespoken by General Pershing and Commander Savage than they were by often-wounded Captain Jean Piot, a contributor to L'Oeuvre.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Pentagon's bespoken spokesman Ken Bacon is getting to be the harbinger of a lot of bad news about the Kosovo situation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Since one cannot bespeak until one has been bespoken, until the telepathic potentiality has been sensitized by one clear reception, I had to get through to him first.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
In the mean time Beethoven wrote several Sonatas and Quartetts, which were bespoken by various noble personages and publishers.
From Life of Beethoven by Anton Schindler
Eight-and-twenty copies were bespoken and paid for before delivery.
From The Bible in Spain - Vol. 2 [of 2] by George Henry Borrow
Pratt was stout, compact and level-eyed, with a raspy drawl bespeaking his childhood on the Louisiana bayou.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 28, 2025
But when you know that he thought of his look as bespeaking a kind of weightlessness, you could also surmise that he knew the price of such flight might be life itself.
From New York Times ● Oct. 14, 2020
For one thing, some of it is very funny, as in a tableau positioning two porcelain figurines of colonial-era gentry before a regal, glowering jet-black face looming above them, their graceful postures bespeaking total incomprehension.
From New York Times ● Jan. 4, 2018
On one of my infrequent breaks from forcing myself not to knock the thing back in three gulps, I sought to give the drink a name bespeaking its virtues and dubbed it the Gimletti Punch.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2013
I saw their eyes bespeaking confusion at this raillery, sorrow to hear our liberator mocked thus, and anxiety at what His Lordship’s uncertainty might mean.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
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.
