Other forms: begets, begetting
To beget is to father a child, or to give rise to something. Beget a son, violence begets violence, begetting trouble.
The literal sense is biblical and archaic. The figurative one is alive and is nearly always a warning: violence begets violence, money begets money. The past forms are begot and begotten, which survive in liturgy. Note that the word is be- plus get, in an old sense of getting a child.
1verbbegetTo father a child, or to give rise to something.
“The old king longed to beget a son who would inherit his throne.”
beget is a bringing into being.
Old English begietan is be- plus get. The sense of fathering is an old use of getting.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰed-
Proto-Germanic
*bigetaną — to find, seize
Old English
beġietan — to get
Middle English
begeten
English, today
beget
From Middle English begeten [influenced by Old Norse geta ("to get, to guess")], from Old English beġietan (“to get”), from Proto-Germanic bigetaną (“to find, seize”), equivalent to be- + get. Cognate with Old Saxon bigetan (“to find, seize”), Old High German bigezan (“to gain, achieve, win, procure”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA