be
verb · noun
Simple meaning
Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
beeIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
auxiliary
Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
now usually literary
To exist; to have real existence, to be alive.
Used with present participles of verbs to form the continuous aspect.
Used to declare the subject and object identical or equivalent.
“The president of the company is John Smith.”
Used to indicate that a predicate nominal applies to the subject.
As a copulative verb
noun
The name of the Cyrillic script letter Б / б
The capital and largest city of Germany.
A calendrical system dating from after the death of the Buddha (taken as 543 BCE).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (auxiliary) Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
Used this way, be is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.