Word.ws English Dictionary

to-be

to-be noun: the future, that which is to come.

Noun

to-be (uncountable)

  1. The future, that which is to come.
    • […] I shall be thy mate no more,
      Tho’ following with an upward mind
      ⁠The wonders that have come to thee,
      ⁠Thro’ all the secular to be,
      But evermore a life behind.1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XL”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 63
    • Comparing the as-is to the to-be provides a gap analysis between where the organization is and where it wants to be.2008, Keith D. Willett, Information Assurance Architecture, page 49
    Synonyms:
    the future

Synonyms of to-be

  • the future

Antonyms

Origin of to-be

From to + be.

Questions about to-be

What does to-be mean?
To-be means the future, that which is to come.
What part of speech is to-be?
To-be is a noun.

Words near to-be in the dictionary

  1. to't
  2. to've
  3. to-
  4. to-and-fro
  5. to-and-fros
  6. to-be
  7. to-bread
  8. to-breads
  9. to-come
  10. to-date
  11. to-day

Source and license

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