betray.
To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly.
Meaning & usage
To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly.
An officer betrayed the city.
He betrayed his own sister to the secret police.
To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive.
to betray a person or a cause
Quresh betrayed Sunil to marry Nuzhat.
To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known.
To disclose (a secret, etc.) in deliberate violation of someone’s confidence.
To disclose or indicate, for example something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally.
Though he had lived in England for many years, a faint accent betrayed his Swedish origin.
To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen; to lead into error or sin.
To lead astray; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English betrayen, bitrayen (“to commit an act of treason against”), equivalent to be- + tray (“to betray”). Middle English bi- is from Old English be- (“be-”), from Proto-Germanic *bi- (“be-”), from Proto-Germanic *bi (“near, by”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi (“at, near”). Compare also traitor, treason, tradition. The modern sense “to disclose, discover, reveal unintentionally” is due to influence from or merger with English bewray (“to reveal, divulge”), which is similar in sound and meaning. The similarity with German betrügen, Dutch bedriegen, from Proto-West Germanic *bidreugan (“to betray, deceive”), is coincidental.
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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.