Meaning

(transitive, formal) To befit, to suit..

Definitions by Sense

1. (transitive, formal) To befit, to suit.
2. (transitive, formal) To be necessary for (someone).
3. (transitive, formal) To be in the best interest of; to benefit.
4. (intransitive, formal) To be needful, meet or becoming.

Example Sentences

[W]here therefore public diversions are tolerated, it behoves persons of distinction, with their power and example, to preside over them in such a manner as to check any thing that tends to the corruption of manners, or which is too mean or trivial for the entertainment of reasonable creatures.

It behoves every man, who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; it behoves him too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which laws have left between God and himself.

I never over Horeb heard / The blast of advent blow; / No fire-faced prophet brought me word / Which way behoved me go.

True, it ill behoves national newspaper columnists and MPs, let alone Prime Ministers, to start pontificating about how men – and hitherto a too tiny handful of women – shouldn't be paid £30,000 a year to risk their lives by going into burning buildings when everybody else is leaving them.

Nor does it behove western commentators whose countries are occupying Iraq to lay down conditions for those opposing it.

Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.

Seeing by the late alliance termed the Rhenish Confederacy, that Louis, King of France, has the most cunning and diabolic intentions on the Imperial Crown, thereby behoving all Germans to unite in a band of brotherhood.

It behooved that the Sonne of God suld descend unto us, and tak himselfe a bodie of our bodie, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bones, and so become the Mediator betwixt God and man, giving power to so many as beleeve in him, to be the sonnes of God; […]

Word Forms

• behoves
• behoving
• behoved
• behoven
• behoove

Synonyms for behove

Related Words

When Should You Use Behove?

Use behove when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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