Believe

How to spell believe

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce believe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does believe mean?

1. verbTo accept that something is true or that someone is telling the truth.

Believe in a sentence

• I believe you are right.

• I believe everything she says.

Where does believe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from Old English gelyfan, meaning 'to hold dear, to trust, or to have faith in', a native Germanic verb closely related to the modern word 'love'. Both believe and love trace back to a shared Proto-Germanic root meaning to esteem or hold something precious, so the idea of trusting once carried a strong sense of valuing. Over the medieval period the prefix shifted from ge- to be-, giving the Middle English form bileven, and the spelling gradually settled with the -ie- in the stressed syllable. The familiar rule 'i before e except after c' applies cleanly here, since the sound follows an l rather than a c. That stressed -lieve- ending is exactly where adults stumble, sometimes writing 'beleive', so anchoring it to the i-before-e pattern is the reliable fix.

How the word is built

• be- (intensive prefix)
• lieve (from Old English lyfan/gelyfan: to hold dear, to trust)