Word.ws English Dictionary

glory be

glory be interjection: used to express surprise.

Interjection

  1. (dated, idiomatic) Used to express surprise.
    Synonyms:
    wow

Proper noun capitalized: Glory Be

Glory Be (plural Glory Bes)

  1. A doxology to the Trinity, commonly prayed as part of the rosary.
    • I said, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’ and a whole string of Glory Bes to try and concentrate my mind, but life kept intruding.1997, Laurie Graham, Perfect Meringues, London: Black Swan, →ISBN, page 86
    Synonyms:
    Gloria Patri, Glory Be to the Father

Synonyms of glory be

  • wow
  • Gloria Patri
  • Glory Be to the Father

Forms of glory be

pluralGlory Bes

Origin of glory be

Shortened from glory be to God.

From the first two words in the English version of this doxology.

Questions about glory be

What does glory be mean?
Glory be means used to express surprise.
What part of speech is glory be?
Glory be can be an interjection or a proper noun.

Words near glory be in the dictionary

  1. gloriousnesses
  2. glorisome
  3. Glorithverse
  4. Glorvina
  5. glory
  6. glory be
  7. glory box
  8. glory boxes
  9. glory boy
  10. glory boys
  11. glory bush

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glory be (page history and authors); Glory Be (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-glory be.ogg.

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