Bet
verbTo risk money or another stake on the outcome of an uncertain event.
How to spell bet
3 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce bet
What does bet mean?
- verbTo risk money or another stake on the outcome of an uncertain event.
- nounAn act of risking a stake on an uncertain outcome, or the amount staked.
Bet in a sentence
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verb
He wanted to bet fifty pounds on the final race.
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noun
She placed a small bet on the home team before kickoff.
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verb
They always bet small amounts during the card game.
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noun
The winning bet paid out three times the original stake.
Where does bet come from?
Language of origin: Other
The origin of bet is genuinely murky, which is why dictionaries hedge on it. It surfaced in English in the late 1500s, first in the slang of gamblers and theatre crowds, meaning a wager staked on an uncertain outcome. The most popular suggestion is that it is a shortened form of the older word abet, which meant to encourage, urge on, or back someone, the sense being that you back your opinion with money. Abet itself came through Old French abeter (to incite or bait), built on a Germanic root tied to biting and goading. Because the early evidence is thin and the connection to abet cannot be firmly proven, the link remains a reasonable guess rather than a settled fact. Mercifully, the spelling has stayed as simple as it sounds throughout its history.
How the word is built
- bet (single root, no affixes; possibly a shortened form of an older verb)
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