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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

betide.

Often used in a prediction (chiefly in woe betide) or a wish: to happen to (someone or something); to befall.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/bɪˈtaɪd/Received-Pronunciation/bəˈtaɪd/General-American
  1. Often used in a prediction (chiefly in woe betide) or a wish: to happen to (someone or something); to befall.

    dated · literary · transitive · usually
    Whether good or ill betide you, trust in yourself.
  2. Chiefly in the third person: to happen; to take place; to bechance, to befall.

    dated · intransitive · literary
Where this word comes from

From Middle English bityden [and other forms]; from bi- (prefix forming verbs, usually with a completive, figurative, or intensive sense) + tyden (“to come about, happen, occur; to befall, become of, happen to (someone); to be the fate of (someone); to await (someone); to fare, get along”); tyden is derived from Old English tīdan (“to befall, betide, happen”), related to tīd (“time; season; hour”) (both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deh₂- (“to divide, share”) or its extended form *deh₂-y-, whence *dh₂ítis (“time”)) + -an (suffix forming the infinitive of most verbs). The English word is analysable as be- + tide (“(obsolete) to happen, occur”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.