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say it: bi-GIN
begin is a verb and noun meaning "take the first step or steps in carrying out an action". It is pronounced /bɪˈɡɪn/ — bi-GIN. It carries 11 recorded senses.
set in motion, cause to start
“The U.S. started a war in the Middle East”
“The Iraqis began hostilities”
“begin a new chapter in your life”
be the first item or point, constitute the beginning or start, come first in a series
“The number `one' begins the sequence”
“A terrible murder begins the novel”
“The convocation ceremony officially begins the semester”
have a beginning, of a temporal event
“WW II began in 1939 when Hitler marched into Poland”
“The company's Asia tour begins next month”
achieve or accomplish in the least degree, usually used in the negative
“This economic measure doesn't even begin to deal with the problem of inflation”
“You cannot even begin to understand the problem we had to deal with during the war”
begin to speak, understand, read, and write a language
“She began Russian at an early age”
“We started French in fourth grade”
Israeli statesman (born in Russia) who (as prime minister of Israel) negotiated a peace treaty with Anwar Sadat (then the president of Egypt) (1913-1992)
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 begin 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.