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say it: bee
be is a verb and noun meaning "have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)". It is pronounced /ˈbi/ — bee. It carries 14 recorded senses.
be identical to; be someone or something
“The president of the company is John Smith”
“This is my house”
happen, occur, take place
“I lost my wallet; this was during the visit to my parents' house”
“There were two hundred people at his funeral”
“There was a lot of noise in the kitchen”
form or compose
“This money is my only income”
“The stone wall was the backdrop for the performance”
“These constitute my entire belonging”
“The children made up the chorus”
“This sum represents my entire income for a year”
“These few men comprise his entire army”
have life, be alive
“Our great leader is no more”
“My grandfather lived until the end of war”
to remain unmolested, undisturbed, or uninterrupted -- used only in infinitive form
“let her be”
a light strong brittle grey toxic bivalent metallic element
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for be come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.