begot
- 1Past tense of beget.
One careless remark begot a feud that lasted three generations.
He begot six children over two marriages and outlived most of them.
Note
Like beget itself, the past tense belongs to literary and formal writing, where it describes causes as readily as children: one quarrel begot another, a careless remark begot a feud. Begat is an alternative past with the same meaning.
- 2Past participle of beget. Less common than begotten.
Centuries of trade along the coast have begot a culture that mixes many languages.
Good my Lord, You haue begot me, bred me, lou'd me.
c. 1603, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”Note
Shakespeare and Milton both put it after have: Cordelia tells Lear you have begot me, bred me, loved me, and Milton writes this day I have begot whom I declare my only Son. A modern writer who reaches for it, as Yuval Noah Harari does when empires have begot hybrid civilizations, borrows that old, formal ring.
begot is a form of beget
beget, verb: To bring a child into being as its parent, especially as its father. Full entry
- Spelling
- beget → begot: irregular (no -ed)
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