Standard Lemma guide

beray

verb · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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  • /bɪˈɹeɪ/
  • Southern-England: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
  • rhymes with -eɪ
  • homophone: bewray

1

verb

Meaning 1

To make foul; befoul; soil.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Examples

  • 1652, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, John French (as J. F.) (translator), Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Also it is said, that if a woman take a needle, and beray it with dung, and then wrap it up in earth, in which the carkass [carcass] of a man was buryed [buried], and shall carry it about her in a cloth which was used at the funerall, that no man shall be able to ly [have sex] with her as long as she hath it about her.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: bedirty, soil, sully, assoil, beclart, bedaub, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befile, befilth, befoul, begrime, beray, beshit, besmear, besmirch, besully, bewray, blacken, blot, blur, clat, contaminate, darken, defile, dirten, dirty, elt, file, foil, foul, gunk, gunk up, inquinate, scunge, sling mud, slotter, slur, smear, smirch, smudge, smut, smutch, soss, sowl, spot, stain, sullow, tarnish, uggle

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

From be- + ray (“to defile”), from Middle English rayen, an aphetic form of array.