Being

How to spell being

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce being

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does being mean?

1. nounA creature or entity that exists, especially a living one.
2. nounThe state or fact of existing.
3. verbThe present participle of 'to be', used to describe a current state or ongoing action.

Being in a sentence

• noun

  Every human being in the building was accounted for after the drill.

• noun

  The new charity came into being after a single donation.

• verb

  The road is being resurfaced this week, so expect delays.

• noun

  The film imagines an intelligent being from another planet.

• noun

  The committee voted to bring the policy into being next month.

• verb

  Despite being tired, she finished the report on time.

Where does being come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly out of the native Old English verb bēon, meaning 'to be' or 'to exist', one of the oldest and most irregular verbs in the language. The ending -ing is the same suffix English uses to turn a verb into an action or a verbal noun, so 'being' literally names the state or fact of existing. The verb 'to be' is unusual because it was stitched together from several different ancient roots, which is why its forms (am, is, are, was, were, been) look so unrelated; 'being' belongs to the bēon strand of that family. By the medieval period the word had also hardened into a concrete noun meaning a creature or a thing that exists, as in 'a living being'. The spelling rarely causes trouble, but the double vowel sequence 'ei' (be plus ing) can briefly look odd because it does not follow the usual 'i before e' habit.

How the word is built

• be (Old English bēon: to exist)
• -ing (verbal noun / participle suffix)