# beget

Pronunciation: say "bi-GET" /biˈɡɛt/

## Verb

1. To bring a child into being as its parent, especially as its father. *(literary)*
   - Simple: To be the parent who brings a child into being, especially the father.
   - _In the old sagas, a hero might beget sons in every land he passed through._
   - _The duke died without begetting a legitimate heir, so the title passed to a cousin._
2. To cause or produce something, so that it comes into existence as a result. *(literary)*
   - Simple: To cause something to happen or to make it exist.
   - _Policies that reward speed over care beget sloppy work._
   - _Violence begets violence, and the feud between the two families dragged on for generations._

## Verb

3. To get hold of something or come into possession of it. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To get something, or to come to have it.

## Other meanings

- (verb) To happen to a person or thing; to befall.

## Origin

Old English beġietan ("to get") goes back to Proto-Germanic *bigetaną, meaning "to find, seize," and is made of be- plus get. It became Middle English begeten, with influence from geta, the Old Norse verb for "to get, to guess." Its cognates are Old Saxon bigetan ("to find, seize") and bigezan, which in Old High German meant "to gain, achieve, win, procure."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/beget (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).