be.
As an auxiliary verb:
Meaning & usage
As an auxiliary verb: Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
The dog was saved by the boy.
As an auxiliary verb: Used with present participles of verbs to form the continuous aspect.
The woman is walking.
I shall be writing to you soon.
As an auxiliary verb: Used with to-infinitives of verbs to express intent, obligation, appropriateness, or relative future occurrence.
I am to leave tomorrow.
They are to stay here until I return.
As an auxiliary verb: Used with past participles of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect aspect.
He is finished.
He is gone.
As an auxiliary verb: To tend to do, often do; marks the habitual aspect.
As a copulative verb: To exist.
There is just one woman in town who can help us.
(or, dialectally:) It is just one woman in town who can help us.
As a copulative verb: Used to declare the subject and object identical or equivalent.
Hi, I’m Jim.
3 times 5 is fifteen.
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate that a predicate nominal applies to the subject.
Rex is a dog.
A dog is an animal.
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate that the subject has the qualities described by an adjective or prepositional phrase.
The sky is blue.
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate that the subject has the qualities described by a noun or noun phrase.
The sky is a deep blue today.
As a copulative verb: Used to link a subject to a measurement.
This building is three hundred years old.
I am 75 kilograms.
As a copulative verb: Used to state the age of a subject in years.
I’m 20 (years old).
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate the time of day.
It is almost eight (o’clock).
It’s 8:30 [read eight-thirty] in Tokyo.
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate passage of time since the occurrence of an event.
It has been three years since my grandmother died. (similar to "My grandmother died three years ago", but emphasizes the intervening period)
It had been six days since his departure, when I received a letter from him.
As a copulative verb: Used to link two noun clauses: a day of the week, recurring date, month, or other specific time (on which the event of the main clause took place) and a period of time indicating how long ago that day was.
I saw her Monday was a week: I saw her a week ago last Monday (a week before last Monday).
On the morning of Sunday was fortnight before Christmas: on the morning of the Sunday that was two weeks before the Sunday prior to Christmas.
As a copulative verb: To pass or spend (time).
As a copulative verb: To take a period of time.
Dinner will be ten minutes.
It was an hour before he returned.
As a copulative verb: Used to indicate ambient conditions such as weather, light, noise or air quality.
It is hot in Arizona, but it is not usually humid.
Why is it so dark in here?
As a copulative verb: To exist or behave in a certain way.
"What do we do?" "We be ourselves."
Just be yourself.
As an intransitive lexical verb: To exist; to have real existence, to be alive.
The Universe has no explanation: it just is.
That was the week that was.
As an intransitive lexical verb: To remain undisturbed in a certain state or situation.
Let them be for a few hours.
Leave us be until the guests arrive.
As an intransitive lexical verb: To occupy a place.
The cup is on the table.
As an intransitive lexical verb: To occur, to take place.
When will the meeting be?
As an intransitive lexical verb: Elliptical form of “be here”, “go to and return from” or similar, also extending to certain other senses of “go”.
The postman has been today, but my tickets have still not yet come.
I have been to Spain many times.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *bʰuHyétider.? Proto-Germanic *beuną Proto-West Germanic *beun Old English bēon Middle English been English be From Middle English been (“to be”). See below for more. 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-.
The name of the Cyrillic script letter Б / б
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Russian бэ (bɛ).
Alternative form of by. Also found in compounds, especially oaths, e.g. begorra begad and bejesus.
Where this word comes from
A variant of by which goes back to Middle English be (variant of Middle English bi).
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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.