Word.ws English Dictionary

weren

weren is the plural simple past of be.

Meaning of be

Verb

be (highly irregular—See conjugation table)

  1. (auxiliary) Used with past participles of verbs to form the passive voice.
    • The dog was saved by the boy.
  2. Used with present participles of verbs to form the continuous aspect.
    • The woman is walking.
  3. Used with to-infinitives of verbs to express intent, obligation, appropriateness, or relative future occurrence.
    • I am to leave tomorrow.
  4. Used with past participles of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect aspect.
    • He is finished.
  5. (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
  6. (with-dummy-subject) To exist.
    • There is just one woman in town who can help us.

See all 25 meanings of be

Forms of weren

alternative formwern
alternative form (dialectal)wurn

Origin of weren

From Middle English weren, from Old English wǣron, plural past indicative of bēon, and wǣren, plural past subjunctive of bēon, equivalent to were + -en.

Questions about weren

What is weren the plural simple past of?
Weren is the plural simple past of be.

Words near weren in the dictionary

  1. weremammoths
  2. wereman
  3. weremen
  4. weremonkey
  5. weremonkeys
  6. weren
  7. weren't
  8. werena
  9. werenae
  10. werent
  11. wereorc

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: weren (page history and authors); 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-weren.wav.

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