be
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
2 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "be", 2-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "be" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "be" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
be is aEnglishverb. It means: As an auxiliary verb: Pronounced /biː/. It ranks #17 in English word frequency. Often confused with by and bi.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | be |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /biː/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English 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 #17 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 25 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 English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bi", "BS", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English been (“to be”). further etymology of be and its conjugated forms The various forms have three separate origins, which were mixed together at various times in the history of English. * The forms beginning with b- come from Old English bēo… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English 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
- 1As an auxiliary verb:
- 2As an auxiliary verb:
- 3As an auxiliary verb:
- 4As an auxiliary verb:
- 5As an auxiliary verb:
- 6As a copulative verb:
- 7As a copulative verb:
- 8As a copulative verb:
- 9As a copulative verb:
- 10As a copulative verb:
- 11As a copulative verb:
- 12As a copulative verb:
- 13As a copulative verb:
- 14As a copulative verb:
- 15As a copulative verb:
- 16As a copulative verb:
- 17As a copulative verb:
- 18As a copulative verb:
- 19As a copulative verb:
- 20As a copulative verb:
- 21As an intransitive lexical verb:
- 22As an intransitive lexical verb:
- 23As an intransitive lexical verb:
- 24As an intransitive lexical verb:
- 25As an intransitive lexical verb:
Etymology
From Middle English been (“to be”). further etymology of be and its conjugated forms The various forms have three separate origins, which were mixed together at various times in the history of English. * The forms beginning with b- come from Old English bēon (“to be, become”), from Proto-Germanic *beuną (“to be, exist, come to be, become”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH-yé-ti (“to grow, become, come into being, appear”), from the root *bʰuH-. In particular: ** Now-dialectal use of been as an infinitive of be is either from Middle English been (“to be”) or an extension of the past participle. ** Now-obsolete use of been as a plural present tense (meaning "are") is from Middle English been, be (present plural of been (“to be”), with the -n leveled in from the past and subjunctive; compare competing forms aren/are). ** Use of been as a past participle is from Middle English been, ybeen, from Old English ġebēon. * The forms beginning with w- come from the aforementioned Old English bēon, which shared its past tense with the verb wesan, from Proto-West Germanic *wesan, from Proto-Germanic *wesaną, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- (“to reside”). * The remaining forms (am, are, is) are also from Old English wesan (“to be”), Proto-West Germanic *wesan, from Proto-Germanic *wesaną, the present tense of which comes from Proto-Indo-European *h₁és-ti, from the root *h₁es-.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #17 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: