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begat

American  
[bih-gat] / bɪˈgæt /

verb

Archaic.

  1. simple past tense of beget.

begat British  
/ bɪˈɡæt /

verb

  1. archaic a past tense of beget

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

And in the course of this year I gave myself, I got the show “Godspell,” and that begat other things.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 18, 2025

Like Leo, it begat a procession of memes solely based on our first glimpse of Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII, the fictional first U.S.-born pontiff, played by a British actor.

From Salon • May 10, 2025

But that broken leg also begat the greatest comeback in NFL history and led to one of the gifts Smith gave Washington football fans — a rare Thanksgiving Day win over the Dallas Cowboys.

From Washington Times • Nov. 22, 2023

It was family tragedy that begat a soldier.

From Seattle Times • Oct. 22, 2023

In fact, rather than Pythagoras’s triangle, there was a circle, or a cycle, at work: form begat information, and then information begat form.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.