befall

Other forms of befall

past tense or participle

befallen

past tense or participle

befell

present participle

befalling·

third person

befalls·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about befall

What does befall mean?

befall means "become of; happen to". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in befall?

befall has 2 syllables: be-fall. The stress falls on "fall". In IPA it is /bɪˈfɔl/.

What is another word for befall?

Close synonyms include bechance, betide, happen, bechance. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is befall a common word?

befall is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with befall?

11 words rhyme with befall. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.