betake

1. (transitive, obsolete) To take over to; take across (to); deliver.obsoletetransitive

2. (transitive, obsolete) To seize; lay hold of; take.Examples: "a rain-cloud [...] had betaken a dusky brown color, and about its lower verge a fringe of fine straight lines of rain was suggested [...]."obsoletetransitive

3. (reflexive, literary) To take oneself to; go or move; repair; resort; have recourse.Examples: "One morning as I lay in my bed, a ſtrong motion vvas ſuddenly glanced into my thoughts of going to London; I aroſe and betook me to the vvay, […]"; "The rest, in imitation, to like arms / Betook them."; "On the slightest loss they betook themselves to treaty and submission; upon the least appearance in their favour they were as ready to resume their arms, without any regard to their former engagements;—a conduct, which demonstrates, that our British ancestors had no regular polity with a standing coercive power."literaryreflexive

4. (reflexive, archaic) To commit to a specified action.archaicreflexive

5. (transitive, archaic) To commend or entrust to; to commit to.archaictransitive

6. (intransitive, archaic, often poetic) To take oneself.Examples: "Then do no further goe, no further stray, / But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake, / Th'ill to preuent, that life ensewen may. / For what hath life, that may it loued make, / And giues not rather cause it to forsake?"archaicintransitiveoftenpoetic