or be's—used in the uninflected form be or sometimes the form bes or be's in African American English and to varying degrees in some other varieties of English to indicate that an action or state is habitual or frequent
I be singing in the shower.
… they be bothering you while you try and do your work. …—unidentified African American English speaker, quoted in The Corpus of Regional African American Language
It bes that way.
We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with "That's not unusual." But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said "It be's like that sometimes."—Maya Angelou
Note:
This feature of African American English often occurs between the subject and predicate of a sentence, and can precede noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectives, passive verbs, -ing verbs, and the African American English feature perfective done. In linguistics, this use is referred to as aspectual be, habitual be, or invariant be. It usually occurs in the uninflected form be, as in the first two examples above; however, in African American English in particular, it sometimes takes the form bes or be's.
or be's—used in the uninflected form be or sometimes the form bes or be's in African American English and to varying degrees in some other varieties of English to indicate that an action or state is habitual or frequent
I be singing in the shower.
… they be bothering you while you try and do your work. …—unidentified African American English speaker, quoted in The Corpus of Regional African American Language
It bes that way.
We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with "That's not unusual." But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said "It be's like that sometimes."—Maya Angelou
Note:
This feature of African American English often occurs between the subject and predicate of a sentence, and can precede noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectives, passive verbs, -ing verbs, and the African American English feature perfective done. In linguistics, this use is referred to as aspectual be, habitual be, or invariant be. It usually occurs in the uninflected form be, as in the first two examples above; however, in African American English in particular, it sometimes takes the form bes or be's.
Verb (1)
stories that begin with the familiar line “once upon a time there was a beautiful maiden”
we'll be there waiting for you
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Verb
And, there are lots of studies out there that show many in my generation have stopped believing in the promise of the American Dream.—
Letters To The Editor,
The Orlando Sentinel,
27 Aug. 2026 There is, however, a growing threat to Nvidia, or at least to parts of its business, as AI makers are increasingly announcing their own custom chips.—
Lim Hui Jie,
CNBC,
27 Aug. 2026 At face value, young men exercising should not be reason to sound the alarms, and yet there is something treacherous about men in their formative years placing physical beauty as the ultimate expression of self-actualization.—
José Criales-Unzueta,
Vanity Fair,
27 Aug. 2026 The rooms There are 16 rooms in the inn, and they’re meant to feel more like bedrooms than hotel rooms.—
Condé Nast,
Condé Nast Traveler,
26 Aug. 2026 See All Example Sentences for be
Word History
Etymology
Verb (1)
Middle English, from Old English bēon; akin to Old High German bim am, Latin fui I have been, futurus about to be, fieri to become, be done, Greek phynai to be born, be by nature, phyein to produce
Prefix
Middle English, from Old English bi-, be-; akin to Old English bī by, near — more at by
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