be
Letters
2 characters
Frequency Rank
#1,621
in German word usage
Misspellings
0
tracked variants
Confusables
20
similar word pairs
be is aGermanverb. It means: sein, existieren Pronounced [biː]. It ranks #1,621 in German word frequency. Often confused with by and Br.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | be |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [biː] |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #1,621 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for be is 2 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [biː]. Corpus data places it at rank #1,621 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for be in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable German patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "Br", "Bi", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct German form is be, spelled B-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1sein, existieren
- 2sich in einer bestimmten, betonten Weise verhalten, sein (existieren)
- 3sein
- 4sein
- 5sein, sich (am genannten Ort) befinden
- 6stattfinden, geschehen
- 7sein, werden
- 8sein, haben
- 9sein
- 10in Verbindung mit einem Infinitiv mitto werden, sollen; zu tun haben (besonders um Bestimmung (Schicksal) oder Pflicht zu betonen)
- 11kosten
- 12normalerweise mitfrom stammen, kommen (aus)
- 13alsbeen,mit Formen vonhave besuchen
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,621 in German
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Nearby German words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our German index: