English

Verb

betray ‎(third-person singular simple present betrays, present participle betraying, simple past and past participle betrayed)

1. To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly

   an officer betrayed the city

2. To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive

   to betray a person or a cause

   Quresh betrayed Sunil to marry Nuzhat.

   My eyes have been betraying since I turned sixty.

3. To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known.
4. To disclose or discover, for example something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally
   • 2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The Onion AV Club:

     Jones’ sad eyes betray a pervasive pain his purposefully spare dialogue only hints at, while the perfectly cast Brolin conveys hints of playfulness and warmth while staying true to the craggy stoicism at the character’s core.

   • 1966, Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch, French rural history:

     Again, to take a less extreme example, there is no denying that although the dialects of northern France retained their fundamentally Romance character, they betray many Germanic influences in phonetics and vocabulary, [...]

5. To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen to lead into error or sin.
6. To lead astray; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.
7. To show or to indicate something not obvious at first, or would otherwise be concealed.

Derived terms

• betrayer
• betrayal noun

Synonyms

• (to prove faithless or treacherous): sell

Translations

External links

• betray in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• betray in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911