been.
past participle of be.
Meaning & usage
past participle of be.
All the fries have been eaten.
We're safe, but the car's been totaled.
remote past form of be.
He been had that job.
We been knew they was doing this.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *bʰuHyétider.? Proto-Germanic *beuną Proto-West Germanic *beun Old English bēon Old English ġebēon Middle English been English been From Middle English been (past participle), from Old English (ġe)bēon. By surface analysis, be + -en.
Synonym of be (infinitival sense).
It useta been five foot long.
Where this word comes from
Either from Middle English been (“to be”, infinitive) (from Old English bēon, equivalent to be + -en (infinitive ending)), or from a dialectal use of the preceding past tense form as an infinitive form (compare dialectal use of (I)'s, (I) is in the first person, (he) am in the third person, etc).
plural simple present of be.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English been (plural indicative form); equivalent to be + -en (plural present ending).
plural of bee
Where this word comes from
From Middle English been, bene, ben, beon, from Old English bēon (“bees”), equivalent to bee + -en (plural ending).
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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.