The story
- Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*bitaiknijan
- Old English · inherited frombetācnian“to betoken, signify, designate”
- Middle English · inherited frombitoknen
- English todaybetoken
From Middle English bitoknen, bitacnen, from Old English betācnian (“to betoken, signify, designate”), from Proto-West Germanic *bitaiknijan. Equivalent to be- + token. Cognate with Dutch betekenen (“to mean, signify”), German bezeichnen (“to call, designate”), Swedish beteckna (“to represent, designate, indicate”) and Danish betegne (“to represent, designate, indicate”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.