Dictionary

bespew en · VERB

Etymology

From be- (“on, upon, all over”) + spew.

Meanings

1. (archaic, transitive) To stain with spew; vomit on; foul with sick.
   • Time was when we used to bespew the whole floor of the hut three or four times a day, but now we can do it but rarely even once a day. 1885, Fritz Schultze, Fetichism : a contribution to anthropology and the history of religion, page 12:
   • In that a Snayl or Dodman, vvhich is not only not vvarm, but to our feeling, very cold, is fain to brood its as cold svveatty eggs, neſted upon a cold vvet earth, beſpievving them about vvith the fuzze of a cold clammy froth, in coldish [d]raughty vveather, and all making vvay to a kind and timely hatching of them: […] I dare undertake to light ſooner of that vvarmth and reek and air, that vvill hatch an hens egge, than that cold and devv and clammineſs, that goes to the hatching of a ſnails. 1674, N[athaniel] Fairfax, chapter V, in A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World. Wherein the Greatness, Littleness and Lastingness of Bodies are Freely Handled. […], London: […] Robert Boulter, […], →OCLC, pages 125–126:
   • It was another one of those nights for the Jenkinses: getting drunk, fighting viciously, making up, making love, and, inevitably, bespewing each other before it was all over. 2025, Peter Novobatzky, Ammon Shea, Depraved English:
   • Well should we weep that force of arm again bespews unholy blood across the plain […] 2008, Edwin Millet, Old Gods Die Hard, page 6:
   • [...] he does nothing but lye snoring all Night long by my Side, and sometimes bespues the Bed too, to say nothing more. 1725 [1518], Nathan, transl. Bailey, “The Uneasy Wife”, in All the Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus, of Roterdam, translation of Colloquies by Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, page 160:

Forms