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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

are.

An accepted (but deprecated and rarely used) metric unit of area equal to 100 square metres, or a former unit of approximately the same extent. Symbol: a.

3 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɛə/Received-Pronunciation/ɛː/Received-Pronunciation/ɛəɹ/General-American/ɛɹ/General-American
  1. An accepted (but deprecated and rarely used) metric unit of area equal to 100 square metres, or a former unit of approximately the same extent. Symbol: a.

    rare
Where this word comes from

From French are.

verb/ə//ɑː//aː//ɐː/
  1. second-person singular simple present of be

    form-of · present · second-person · singular
    Mary, where are you going?
  2. first-person plural simple present of be

    first-person · form-of · plural · present
    We are not coming.
  3. second-person plural simple present of be

    form-of · plural · present · second-person
    Mary and John, are you listening?
  4. third-person plural simple present of be

    form-of · plural · present · third-person
    They are here somewhere.
  5. present of be

    East · Midlands · Yorkshire · form-of · present
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *arun? Old English earon Middle English aren English are From Middle English aren, from Old English (Anglian) earun, earon (“are”, plural). Possibly reinforced by the Old Norse plural forms in er-, this displaced the alternative forms Old English sind and bēoþ. In the second person singular it displaced archaic art. Further etymology controversial: * The English forms, as well as the Old Swedish forms in ær-, could reflect Proto-Germanic preterite-present *ōr ~ *arum, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃e-h₃ór-h₂e (“I have risen”, perfect). * Since they are not the expected outcomes of the Proto-Germanic forms of *wesaną (“to be”) in *iz-, they would have to be irregular alterations. For Seebold this explanation is still preferable as similar variants in other verbs are not uncommon.

det/ə//ɑː//aː//ɐː/
  1. Misspelling of our.

    UK · US · alt-of · misspelling
Where this word comes from

From the phonetic similarity between our and are in many English dialects (both /ɑː(ɹ)/).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.