BETRAY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Betray

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/bɪtrˈeɪ/ Listen

verb

Betray v. t. (past & past part. betrayed; pres. part. betraying)

1.

To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly; as, an officer betrayed the city. "Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men."

2.

To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive; as, to betray a person or a cause. "But when I rise, I shall find my legs betraying me."

3.

To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known. "Willing to serve or betray any government for hire."

4.

To disclose or discover, as something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally. "Be swift to hear, but cautious of your tongue, lest you betray your ignorance."

5.

To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen to lead into error or sin. "Genius... often betrays itself into great errors."

6.

To lead astray, as a maiden; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.

7.

To show or to indicate; said of what is not obvious at first, or would otherwise be concealed. "All the names in the country betray great antiquity."

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Etymology of 'Betray'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Betray" Quotes from Famous Books

... calling to the masses, to the peasant, and the peer; He is calling to all classes, that the crucial hour is near; For each rotting throne must tremble, and fall broken in the dust, With the leaders who dissemble, and betray a ...

— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... devices; for their noble bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was a guarantee that never ...

— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... will Campaspe yield the gates of her heart, nor does the artist press the attack with heated fervour. So gentle a besieger is he, that we perceive the young couple drifting into love on the stream of destiny, almost reluctant to betray their growing feelings through fear of the wrath of Alexander. Apelles is already smitten but Campaspe is still 'fancy free' when, in the artist's studio, she questions ...

— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... the severest cruelties practised upon these inoffensive people, was that of requiring them to betray their friends, the Indians, under the heaviest penalties. In Acadia, the red and the white man were as brothers; no treachery, no broken faith, no over-reaching policy had severed the slightest fibre of good ...

— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... out into the darkness amid rooms and passages with which he considers himself familiar and suddenly—there comes a door where should be space, or space where there should be a window—and he is lost, his senses betray him, for the moment he is completely fogged, all bearings lost, possessed with the blankness that accompanies the flight ...

— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

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