Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of betoken.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Alii aimoku, sovereign of the land. aloha, a word betokening greeting or farewell.

    Hawaiian Folk Tales A Collection of Native Legends 1887

  • William smothers a laugh; the procession moves funereally, the faithful nurse watching it with an expression betokening intense anxiety.

    Lands of the Slave and the Free Cuba, the United States, and Canada Henry A. Murray

  • There were changes in Joan's face since she saw it last -- not changes which might have been attributed to the possession of Joe Noy, but an alteration of expression betokening thought, a look of increased age, of experiences not wholly happy in their nature.

    Lying Prophets Eden Phillpotts 1911

  • Had she made just then any movement of horror or of disgust, had an expression betokening fear of him come into her eyes,

    Tongues of Conscience Robert Smythe Hichens 1907

  • Rachel's, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, there is an expression betokening strong resistance from within of the brunt of a whirlwind from without.

    Red Pottage Mary Cholmondeley 1892

  • Though Nature had deprived him of speech, his serene countenance spoke eloquently in his favor, its mild benevolent expression betokening that inward peace of the heart which so often renders old age more beautiful than youth.

    Ardath Marie Corelli 1889

  • But his nose -- foes, if by possibility he could have had any, might have called it a snub, or a button; supposing it was either one or the other, or both, it was full of expression, -- the best of snubs, the best of button noses, all that expression betokening fun and humour, and kindness and benevolence.

    Tales of the Sea And of our Jack Tars William Henry Giles Kingston 1847

  • Rachel’s, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, there is an expression betokening strong resistance from within of the brunt of a whirlwind from without.

    Red Pottage 2004

  • It was a world in which many well-educated men and women had come to see the Church of England as insufficiently countercultural in the face of materialism, agnosticism, and alternating moods of self-pride and despair, and who then saw in Rome a constancy and a consistency betokening a sure guide to the meaning of the

    Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: 2009

  • And like Mr. Franzen's "Freedom," "The Free World" bears a title that is itself a form of sarcasm, betokening not liberation but license.

    Lost in Transit Sam Sacks 2011

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