be·stow  (b ĭ-st ō)
Share:
tr.v. be·stowed, be·stow·ing, be·stows 1. To present as a gift or an honor; confer: bestowed high praise on the winners. 2. To apply; use: "On Hester Prynne's story ... I bestowed much thought" (Nathaniel Hawthorne). 3. To place or stow: "He bestowed [the money] in his pockets with feigned composure" (James Joyce). 4. To store or house.
[Middle English bistowen : bi-, be- + stowen, to place; see STOW.]
be·stowa·ble adj. be·stowal, be·stowment n. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
Indo-European Roots
Semitic Roots
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
This website is best viewed in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. Some characters in pronunciations and etymologies cannot be displayed properly in Internet Explorer.