Word.ws English Dictionary

BeReal

BeReal proper noun: a French social media app, released in 2020, which prompts users daily to take photos of whatever they are doing using the front and back cameras of their phones.

Proper noun (1)

BeReal

  1. (social media) A French social media app, released in 2020, which prompts users daily to take photos of whatever they are doing using the front and back cameras of their phones.
    • A French programmer and entrepreneur created the social media app BeReal in 2020 to combat what he saw as an increasingly unhealthy and materialistic social media landscape. Seemingly out of nowhere, BeReal has made its way to college campuses.2022 April 6, Carson Lott, “New social media app asks users to ‘BeReal’”, in The Crimson White, archived from the original on 30 Sep 2023
    • And it’s been successful, with about 40 million installs of BeReal this year alone, according to data from Apptopia, which tracks and analyzes mobile app performance.2022 October 13, “On BeReal, is it possible to actually be real?”, in CNN

Noun

BeReal (plural BeReals)

  1. (social media) A post published on the French social media app BeReal, consisting of photos from both the front and back cameras of a user's phone, providing a visual depiction of what they are doing in that moment.
    • Once a day you get a notification from the app. It tells you that it's time to post your BeReal for the day and you have two minutes to do so. […] Users can also see where their friends are on a map and discover other publicly posted BeReals.2022 April 16, Wynne Davis, “BeReal is Gen Z's new favorite social media app. Here's how it works”, in NPR
    • While scrolling through BeReals in the past few weeks, I’ve occasionally felt gripped by loneliness. Seeing others partying, hanging out with friends, or curled up on the couch with their significant others, framed as everyday slices of life, elicited a more intense fear of missing out than I’ve...2022 May 13, R. E. Hawley, “BeReal and the Fantasy of an Authentic Online Life”, in The New Yorker

Verb

BeReal (third-person singular simple present BeReals, present participle BeRealing, simple past and past participle BeRealed)

  1. (intransitive) To use the social media app BeReal.
    • BeReal loves to notify me when I’m doing something mundane like heating up beans in the microwave or wiping down my salt lamp with a damp cloth. This can be solved very simply by turning off your notifications and only BeReal-ing when you’re doing something genuinely interesting like, I don’t know...2022 November 4, Daisy Jones, “How to Look Good on BeReal”, in Vice

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Bereal

Bereal (plural Bereals)

  1. A surname.

Examples of BeReal in a sentence

  • But on BeReal this is much harder to do as users will be notified how many retakes it took to get the perfect shot.2022 April 8, “Five Facts to Know About BeReal App”, in Yahoo! Sports:
  • People may have grown tired of BeReal’s authenticity facade. […] BeReal held a mirror – or at least a front-facing camera – up to its users, encouraging reflection on our self-presentations.2023 May 4, Ysabel Gerrard, “BeReal is now in freefall. Why are new social media apps doomed to fail?”, in The Guardian, archived from the...
  • By 2025, BeReal was a bit like the houseplant you left shrivelled up on your windowsill.2025 September 23, Jessica Berry, “It’s time to delete: The rise and fall of BeReal, the app which once had us in a chokehold”, in The Tab:
  • While scrolling through BeReals in the past few weeks, I’ve occasionally felt gripped by loneliness.2022 May 13, R. E. Hawley, “BeReal and the Fantasy of an Authentic Online Life”, in The New Yorker:

Forms of BeReal

Noun
pluralBeReals
Verb
third-person singular presentBeReals
present participleBeRealing
past participleBeRealed
pastBeRealed
Proper noun
pluralBereals

Origin of BeReal

From be real, intended as a play on words: its primary reference relates to its focus on users uploading unpolished photos, while also being a pun on the term B-reel. The app was developed by Alexis Barreyat, a former employee of GoPro, and Kevin Perreau.

Questions about BeReal

What does BeReal mean?
BeReal means a French social media app, released in 2020, which prompts users daily to take photos of whatever they are doing using the front and back cameras of their phones.
How do you use BeReal in a sentence?
But on BeReal this is much harder to do as users will be notified how many retakes it took to get the perfect shot.
What part of speech is BeReal?
BeReal can be a proper noun, a noun or a verb.

Words near BeReal in the dictionary

  1. Bere Ferrers
  2. Bere Regis
  3. Berea
  4. beread
  5. bereads
  6. BeReal
  7. BeRealed
  8. BeRealing
  9. BeReals
  10. Berean
  11. Bereanism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: BeReal (page history and authors); Bereal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-BeReal.wav.

Cite this entry: “BeReal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bereal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.