Definition of "betoken" [be•to•ken]

• To be or give a sign or portent of. See Synonyms at indicate. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The name, the accompaniments, and the child's expression betoken a rare delicacy of conception."
• "The plan of the city is more or less the geometrically regular one of main and cross-streets running at right angles to each other, and the principal of these are lined with shops, whose windows display luxurious articles of jewellery, clothing, and other effects such as betoken the taste and purchasing power of a wealthy upper class."
• "An alternative form of the Indo-European root, again to do with showing or indicating, is *deig-, which appears in the native English words token, betoken, and that venerable one for pointing students down the best path, teach."