bes

/biːz/

bes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of be.

bes is the present tense inflected form of be.

bes is the plural of be.

bes is the alternative form of beth.

Meaning of be

Verb

be (highly irregular—See conjugation table)

(auxiliary) Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
- The dog was saved by the boy.
Used with present participles of verbs to form the continuous aspect.
- The woman is walking.
Used with to-infinitives of verbs to express intent, obligation, appropriateness, or relative future occurrence.
- I am to leave tomorrow.
Used with past participles of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect aspect.
- He is finished.
(Caribbean, Ireland, auxiliary, African-American Vernacular) To tend to do, often do; marks the habitual aspect.
- Women be shoppin’! You cannot stop a woman from shoppin’!1996, David Sheffield, Barry W. Blaustein, Tom Shadyac and Steve Oedekerk, screenplay of The Nutty Professor
(with-dummy-subject) To exist.
- There is just one woman in town who can help us.

See all 25 meanings of be

Meaning of beth

Noun

beth (plural beths)

The second letter of the Phoenician alphabet, 𐤁
The second letter of the Aramaic alphabet, 𐡁
The second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, ב
The second letter of the Syriac alphabet, ܒ

See all 5 meanings of beth

Noun (1)

bes (plural besses)

(historical) A bronze coin of the Roman Republic, worth two thirds of an as.

Noun (2) capitalized: BES

BES (uncountable)

N,N-bis(2-hydroxyethyl)-2-aminoethanesulfonic acid

Proper noun (1) capitalized: BES

BES

(abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of British Election Study.
- I use data from several recent academic national surveys: the 2013 Austrian Election Study (AES), British Election Study Panel Survey (BES) conducted in January 2014 (from which I include respondents living in England), and the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) wave conducted in May 2013....(Can we date this quote?), Erik R. Tillman, “Authoritarianism and Support for Populist Radical Right Parties”, in DePaul University, pages 8-9

Noun (3) capitalized: BEs

BEs

(plural) plural of BE

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Bes

IPA/bɛs/

Bes

(Egyptian) An ancient Egyptian god, the protector of households and mothers, children and childbirth.
- The god Bes occurred so early in the human imagination that it reaches back to the earliest of human settlements along the Nile.2009, Molefi Kete Asante, Ama Mazama, editors, Encyclopedia of African Religion, SAGE, →ISBN, page 121

Synonyms of bes

Forms of bes

Verb
alternative form	be's
Noun
plural	besses
Proper noun
alternative form	Bisu

Origin of bes

Inherited from Middle English bes.

Borrowed from Latin bes.

Words that rhyme with bes

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bes

What does bes mean?: Bes means a bronze coin of the Roman Republic, worth two thirds of an as.
What is bes the third-person singular simple present indicative of?: Bes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of be.
What part of speech is bes?: Bes can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bes?: Bes is pronounced /biːz/.
What is the plural of bes?: The plural of bes is besses.

Words near bes in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bes (page history and authors); BES (page history and authors); BEs (page history and authors); Bes (page history and authors); be (page history and authors); beth (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-bes.wav.

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