Begin
verbTo start to do something or to come into being.
How to spell begin
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce begin
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does begin mean?
- verbTo start to do something or to come into being.
Begin in a sentence
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The meeting will begin promptly at nine in the morning.
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They decided to begin saving for a deposit on a house.
Where does begin come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English beginnan, meaning 'to start' or 'to set about doing something'. It was built from the intensive prefix be- attached to the verb root -ginnan, which carried the sense of opening up or undertaking an action and never appeared on its own in the language. The same root surfaces in related Germanic tongues, including the Dutch beginnen and the German beginnen, all sharing the idea of commencing. The word has stayed remarkably stable in meaning across more than a thousand years, even as its strong-verb forms 'began' and 'begun' kept the older vowel changes alive. For spellers the one quiet trap is the single consonants: it is be-gin, not 'beggin', so the doubled g only appears in the inflected form 'beginning'.
How the word is built
- be- (intensive prefix)
- gin (from Old English -ginnan: to open, to start)
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