Betray

Meaning

Betray means to be disloyal to someone who trusts you, especially by revealing their secrets, breaking their trust, or acting against their interests.

Pronunciation

/bɪˈtreɪ/

Word Forms

• Base form: betray
• Past tense: betrayed
• Past participle: betrayed
• Present participle: betraying
• Noun: betrayal
• Adjective: betrayed / betraying

Synonyms

Antonyms

Common Collocations

• betray someone's trust — to act in a way that destroys someone's confidence in you.
• betray a friend — to act disloyally toward a friend.
• betray a secret — to reveal information that was supposed to remain private.
• betray someone's confidence — to reveal something told to you privately.
• betray one's principles — to act against one's own beliefs or values.
• betray a cause — to abandon or act against a cause or principle that one previously supported.

Example Sentences

• She felt deeply hurt when her closest friend betrayed her trust.
• He promised that he would never betray their secret.
• The soldier was accused of betraying his country.
• She refused to betray the people who had trusted her.
• His actions seemed to betray everything he claimed to believe in.

Literary Example

Example:

“For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason.”

— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 151

Here, betray means to be disloyal to someone or something, or to act against one's own interests or principles. Shakespeare uses the word in a more complex sense: the speaker claims that being betrayed by his lover causes him, in turn, to betray his own “nobler part” by surrendering to physical desire.

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