verb
definition
To promise to give in marriage.
example
He betrothed his daughter to a distant relative.
definition
To promise to take (as a future spouse); to plight one's troth to.
noun
definition
One who is betrothed, i.e. a fiancé or fiancée.
adjective
definition
Engaged to be married.
Examples of betrothed in a Sentence
The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple their blessing.
I was betrothed when I was sixteen to another servant.
He hoped Billy and his betrothed had something.
On the following day Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour.
In 1109 she was betrothed to the emperorelect, Henry V., and was sent to Germany, but the marriage was delayed till 1114.
Marcus had been, at the age of fifteen, betrothed to Fabia, the sister of Commodus; the engagement was broken off by Antoninus Pius, and he was betrothed to Faustina, the daughter of the latter.
After his grandfather, George I., became king of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714, Frederick was known as duke of Gloucester and made a knight of the Garter, having previously been betrothed to Wilhelmina Sophia Dorothea (1709-1758), daughter of Frederick William I., king of Prussia, and sister of Frederick the Great.
She was betrothed early to Charles, duke d'Alengon, and married him in 1509.
When peace was eventually made at Troyes in May 1420 Henry and Catherine were betrothed, and the marriage took place at Troyes on the 2nd of June 1420.
And here he was sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty.
Ottakar was then invested with Bohemia by Rudolph, and his son Wenceslaus was betrothed to a daughter of the German king, who made a triumphal entry into Vienna.
A betrothed girl, seduced by her prospective father-in-law, took her dowry and returned to her family, and was free to marry as she chose.
Stephanie de Beauharnais, niece of Josephine, was also betrothed to the son of the duke (now grand duke) of Baden.
Richard soon followed; but while Philip sailed straight for Acre, Richard occupied himself by the way in conquering Cyprus - partly out of knight-errantry, and in order to avenge an insult offered to his betrothed wife Berengaria by the despot of the island, partly perhaps out of policy, and in order to provide a basis of supplies and of operations for the armies attempting to recover Palestine.
It has a cathedral, near which lie buried Mary Menshikov, once betrothed to the tsar Peter II., and some of the Dolgorukis.
Lassalle sent a challenge both to the lady's father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter.
In 1243 Henry's son Albert was betrothed to Margaret, daughter of Frederick II.; and Pleissnerland, a district west of Meissen, was added to his possessions.
Arthur Hallam was now betrothed to Emily Tennyson (afterwards Mrs Jesse, 1811-1889), and stayed frequently at Somersby.
At Darmstadt he made the acquaintance of Caroline Flachsland, to whom he soon became betrothed, and who for the rest of his life supplied him with that abundance of consolatory sympathy which his sensitive and rather querulous nature appeared to require.
In 1507 Francis was betrothed to Claude, the daughter of Louis and in 1508 he came to court.
Alcmene, who had been betrothed to Amphitryon by her father, refused to marry him until he had avenged the death of her brothers, all of whom except one had fallen in battle against the Taphians.
To raise funds for this he was betrothed to Philippa, daughter of the count of Hainaut.
In consequence of a treaty between Philip Augustus and John of England, she was betrothed to the former's son, Louis, and was brought to France, in the spring of 1200, by John's mother Eleanor.
At Jawor6w Peter the Great was betrothed to Catherine I.
It was also stipulated that Margaret, daughter of Alexander, should be betrothed to Eric, the son of Magnus, whom she married in 1281.
Toghrul Beg now re-entered Bagdad, re-established the caliph, and was betrothed to his daughter, but died before the consummation of the nuptials (September 1063).
When only five years old John was betrothed (1173) to the heiress of Maurienne and Savoy, a principality which, as dominating the chief routes from France and Burgundy to Italy, enjoyed a consequence out of all proportion to its area.
By his divorce from Isabella of Gloucester he offended the English baronage (1200); by his marriage with Isabella of Angouleme, the betrothed of Hugh of Lusignan, he gave an opportunity to the discontented Poitevins for invoking French assistance and to Philip Augustus for pronouncing against him a sentence of forfeiture.
On the death of Rudolph in 937, his widow married Hugh, king of Italy, to whose son Lothair Adelaide was at the same time betrothed.
After being betrothed successively to Gaston de Foix, Charles of Austria (the future emperor Charles V.), his brother Ferdinand, Henry VIII.
But the lady arrived after the death of her betrothed, and after long hesitation became the bride of the father.
On the following day she was formally betrothed, and was married to the archduke on the 21st of August 1745 at St Petersburg.
After vainly invoking the aid of the emperor Frederick I., the young king came to terms with Louis (1160), whose daughter was betrothed to Henry's namesake and heir.
In 1548 the queen of six years old was betrothed to the dauphin Francis, and set sail for France, where she arrived on the 15th of August.
He was a son of a high official, and betrothed to a daughter of the king, but escaped on the eve of the wedding feast, entered the order, and attained to reverence and distinction.
Magas before his death had betrothed his daughter Berenice to the son of his brother Ptolemy II.
Otto was now again chosen German king, and to aid and mark the general reconciliation he was betrothed to the murdered kings daughter Beatrix.
Madame de Prie first suggested the Polish princess as a bride for Louis duke of Bourbon, but she was soon betrothed not to him but to Louis XV., a step which was the outcome of the jealousies of the houses of Conde and Orleans, and was everywhere regarded as a mesalliance for the French king.
This rite seems to reflect an actual custom of abduction; or it may rather refer to the practice of intercourse between the betrothed before marriage.
The count of Ponthieu, as he was called in his boyhood, was betrothed in 1413 to Mary of Anjou, daughter of Louis II., duke of Anjou and king of Sicily, and spent the next two years at the Angevin court.
He had been betrothed to his brother's widow Catherine of Aragon, and in spite of the protest which he had been made to register against the marriage, and of the doubts expressed by Julius II.
In that year he brought to a conclusion marriage negotiations not less momentous in their ultimate results, when Prince Arthur was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon.
An unhappy adventure in love deepened his sense of failure, but he became betrothed to Maria White in the autumn of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were deeply affected by her influence.
He was betrothed to Catherine, second daughter of Alexis Dolgoruki, and the wedding was actually fixed for the 30th of January 1730; but on that very day the emperor died of small-pox.
Her elder sister, Martha, was betrothed by her parents to Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire justice of the peace, but she died before marriage, and Anne was induced or compelled to take her place.
Repudiation of the tie by fervent women, betrothed or already wives, occasioned much domestic friction and popular persecution.
Llewelyn was, however, foolish enough to lose the results of this very favourable treaty by intriguing with the de Montfort family, and in 1273 he became betrothed to Eleanor de Montfort, the old Earl's only daughter, a piece of political folly which may possibly in some degree account for Edward's harsh treatment of the Welsh prince.
One of these was Cotiso, whose daughter Augustus is said to have desired to marry and to whom he betrothed his own five-year-old daughter Julia.
His first minister was the incapable duke of Bourbon, who in 1725 procured the repudiation of the Spanish princess, to whom the king had been betrothed, and his marriage to Maria Leszczynska, daughter of the exiled king of Poland, then resident in Alsace.
While in Northumberland Knox had been betrothed to Margaret Bowes, one of the fifteen children of Richard Bowes, the captain of Norham Castle.