Betoken

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /bɪˈtoʊ.kən/

Definitions

1. To be a sign or indication of something, or to suggest the presence or coming of something
2. To serve as an indicator or signal that something exists, will happen, or is present
3. To function as evidence or a meaningful sign pointing toward the existence or arrival of something

Etymology: Old English speakers already had a verb for pointing to something beyond itself. "Betācnian" meant "to signify, designate," built from the prefix "be-" and a noun that is the ancestor of modern "token." So the core idea was a sign that stands in for a larger reality: a token is a small thing that represents a bigger one, and to betoken is to act as that sign. The word has relatives across the North Sea and beyond. Dutch "betekenen" means "to mean," German "bezeichnen" means "to designate" or "to label," and Swedish and Danish have close equivalents meaning "to indicate" or "to represent." They all descend from the same Germanic verb, which suggests that the sense of marking or naming something was shared long before English settled on its current form. In Middle English the word appeared as "bitoknen" and "bitacnen," and the modern spelling with "betoken" emerged later. Its meaning has stayed close to the original: a thing that signals or foreshadows another thing, whether a dark sky betokening a storm or a rash betokening an infection.

Synonyms: indicate, signify, denote, represent, imply

Antonyms: misrepresent, conceal, hide, suppress, obscure