be

IPA: bˈi

noun

The name of the Cyrillic script letter Б / б.
Initialism of Bachelor of Engineering.
(linguistics) Initialism of Black English. [Any of several varieties of English spoken by or associated with Black people, especially people of African origin or in Africa.]
Initialism of Buddhist Era. [A calendrical system dating from after the death of the Buddha (taken as 543 BCE).]
Abbreviation of Berlin, a federal state of Germany. [The capital and largest city of Germany.]
Abbreviation of Bengkulu, a province of Indonesia. [A province of Indonesia on the southwest coast of Sumatra.]

verb

As an auxiliary verb:
(auxiliary) Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
Used with present participles of verbs to form the continuous aspect.
(formal) Used with to-infinitives of verbs to express intent, obligation, appropriateness, or relative future occurrence.
Used with past participles of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect aspect.
(African-American Vernacular, Caribbean, Ireland, auxiliary, not conjugated) To tend to do, often do; marks the habitual aspect.
As a copulative verb:
(with there, or dialectally it, as dummy subject) To exist.
Used to indicate that the subject and object are identical or equivalent.
Used to indicate that the subject is an instance of the predicate nominal.
Used to indicate that the subject has the qualities described by an adjective, prepositional phrase.
Used to indicate that the subject has the qualities described by a noun or noun phrase.
Used to link a subject to a measurement.
(with a cardinal numeral) Used to state the age of a subject in years.
(with a dummy subject it) Used to indicate the time of day.
(with since) Used to indicate passage of time since the occurrence of an event.
(rare and regional, chiefly in the past tense) Used to link two noun clauses, the first of which is a day of the week, recurring date, month, or other specific time (on which the event of the main clause took place), and the second of which is a period of time indicating how long ago that day was.
(often impersonal, with it as a dummy subject) Used to indicate weather, air quality, or the like.
(dynamic / lexical be, especially in progressive tenses, conjugated non-suppletively in the present tense, see usage notes) To exist or behave in a certain way.
As an intransitive lexical verb:
(now usually literary) To exist; to have real existence, to be alive.
To remain undisturbed in a certain state or situation.
To occupy a place.
To occur, to take place.
(in perfect tenses) Elliptical form of "be here", "go to and return from" or similar, also extending to certain other senses of "go".

be

noun

verb

adjective

Examples of "be" in Sentences

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