bee

• IPA^(key): /ˈbiː/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Homophones: b, be, Bea
• Rhymes: -iː

A bee

From Middle English bee, from Old English bēo, from Proto-West Germanic *bijā, from Proto-Germanic *bijō, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰey-.

bee (plural bees or (dialectal) been)

1. A flying insect, of the clade Anthophila within the hymenopteran superfamily Apoidea, known for its organised societies (though only a minority have them), for collecting pollen and (in some species) producing wax and honey.
   • 1499, John Skelton, The Bowge of Courte:

     His face was belymmed as byes had him stounge […].

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     An angry Wasp th'one in a viall had, / Th'other in hers an hony-laden Bee.

   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     Can there be a more formall, and better ordered policie, divided into so severall charges and offices, more constantly entertained, and better maintained, than that of Bees?

   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 17:

     Ariell: / Where the Bee ſucks, there ſuck I, / In a Cowslips bell, I lie, / There I cowch when Owles doe crie, / On the Batts backe I doe flie / after Sommer merrily. / Merrily, merrily, ſhall I liue now / Vnder the bloſſom that hangs on the Bow.

   • 1657, Samuel Purchas, “The Excellency of Bees”, in A Theatre of Politicall Flying-Insects. […], London: […] R. I. for Thomas Parkhurst, […], →OCLC, page 1:

     Bees are the moſt excellent of all Inſects vvhatſoever, and expreſſe both vvorth and vvonder in all their vvaies: […]

   • 2012 March 31, “Subtle poison”, in The Economist:

     Bees pollinate many of the world’s crops—a service estimated to be worth $15 billion a year in America alone.

• king of insects

• pollinator

• Beowulf (possibly)

• apiology, apiculture, beekeeping
• (castes): worker bee, worker, queen bee, queen, drone
• (behavior): beehive, eusocial, hive, swarm, tremble dance, waggle dance
• (anatomy): corbicula, sarothrum, scopa, sting
• (substances): ambrosia, beebread, beeswax, honey, honeycomb, propolis, royal jelly
• apitherapy
• (hives): apiary, beehouse, skep, Langstroth hive,
• (equipment): super, queen-cage, bee escape, duplet, honey extractor, topbar, bee smoker, apidictor
• (diseases): chalkbrood, colony collapse disorder, foulbrood, nosema, sacbrood, stonebrood, varroa

Possibly from dialectal bene, been, bean (“help given by neighbours”), from Middle English been, bene (“neighbourly help, prayer, petition, request, extra service given by a tenant to his lord”),[1][2] from Old English bēn (“prayer, request, petition, favour, compulsory service”), from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“prayer, request, supplication”). Thus a variant of obsolete ben (“prayer; petition”) and doublet of boon. Cognate with Danish bøn (“prayer”), Dutch ban (“curse”), German Bann (“ban”). More at ban.

bee (plural bees)

1. A contest, especially for spelling; see spelling bee.

   geography bee

2. A community gathering to share labour, e.g. a sewing bee or a quilting bee.
   • 1856, Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime:

     The cellar […] was dug by a bee in a single day.

   • 1973, Alan Skeoch, Tony H. Smith, Canadians and their society, page 139:

     There was but little variation in types of buildings in the pioneer period: house, church, store, barn and mill were usually much alike except in size, and a raising bee was the ordinary means of their erection.

   • 2011 September 21, Tim Blanning, “The reinvention of the night”, in Times Literary Supplement:

     Particularly resistant, for example, in many parts of northern Europe was the “spinning bee”, a nocturnal gathering of women to exchange gossip, stories, refreshment and – crucially – light and heat, as they spun wool or flax, knitted or sewed.

From Middle English beeȝ, bie, bei, begh, beiȝe, bege, beah, bye, from Old English bēah, bēag, from Proto-Germanic *baugaz. Doublet of beag, a learned borrowing; and of bagel.

bee (plural bees)

1. (obsolete) A ring or torque; a bracelet.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Caxton, Book 7, Chapter xxxv:

     And kyng Arthur gaf her a ryche bee of gold and soo she departed

   • 1658, Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial, Penguin, published 2005, page 16:

     ...restoring unto the world much gold richly adorning his Sword, two hundred Rubies, many hundred Imperial Coynes, three hundred golden Bees, the bones and horseshoe of his horse enterred with him...

Variant spellings.

bee

1. Obsolete spelling of be
   • 1604, Reverend Cawdrey, Table Aleph:

     held that a ‘Nicholaitan is an heretike, like Nicholas, who held that wiues should bee common to all alike.’

2. (obsolete) past participle of be; been

   Cride out, Now now Sir knight, shew what ye bee,

From Middle English [Term?], from Old English be, from Latin be (the name of the letter B).

bee (plural bees)

1. The name of the Latin-script letter B/b.
   • 2004, Will Rogers, The Stonking Steps, page 170:

     "The ee-vee-ee-ar-en-oh-ee-ell-blank-bee-ell-oh-ess-ess-oh-em-blank-en-ee-cee-tee-ay-ar is especially dee-ee-ell-eye-cee-eye-oh-you-ess." Our friends thanked the spelling bee for his help and then he buzzed off.

• (Latin-script letter names) letter; a, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, aitch, i, jay, kay, el, em, en, o, pee, cue, ar, ess, tee, u, vee, double-u, ex, wye, zee / zed

Probably from Old English bēah (“ring”). Compare bow.

bee (plural bees)

1. (nautical, usually in the plural) Any of the pieces of hard wood bolted to the sides of the bowsprit, to reeve the fore-topmast stays through.

• bee block

• EBE

• IPA^(key): /ˈbeː/, [ˈbeː]
• Hyphenation: bee

bée (autobenefactive beeté)

1. (transitive) to take
2. (transitive) to take away
3. (transitive, + l-case) to overcome
4. (transitive, + l-case) to be angry with

• E. M. Parker, R. J. Hayward (1985) “bee”, in An Afar-English-French dictionary (with Grammatical Notes in English), University of London, →ISBN
• Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)‎, Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis)

bee

1. (intransitive) to grow

• Ross, M. & Næss, Å. (2007) “An Oceanic origin for Äiwoo, the language of the Reef Islands?”, in Oceanic Linguistics, volume 46, number 2. Cited in: "Äiwoo" in Greenhill, S.J., Blust, R., & Gray, R.D. (2008). The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From Bioinformatics to Lexomics. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 4:271–283.

From English belly.

bee

1. belly, stomach
2. uterus, womb
3. pregnancy
4. lineage, family line

• Aukan-English Dictionary (SIL)

• IPA^(key): /ᵐbe/

bee

1. fish

• Leenhardt, M. (1946) Langues et dialectes de l'Austro-Mèlanèsie. Cited in: "ⁿDuᵐbea" in Greenhill, S.J., Blust, R., & Gray, R.D. (2008). The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From Bioinformatics to Lexomics. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 4:271–283.
• Shintani, T.L.A. & Païta, Y. (1990) Dictionnaire de la langue de Païta, Nouméa: Sociéte d'etudes historiques de Nouvelle-Calédonie. Cited in: "Drubea" in Greenhill, S.J., Blust, R., & Gray, R.D. (2008). The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From Bioinformatics to Lexomics. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 4:271–283.

bee (genitive [please provide], partitive [please provide])

1. The name of the Latin-script letter B/b.

From Latin bē.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbeː/, [ˈbe̞ː]
• Rhymes: -eː
• Syllabification^(key): bee

bee

1. The name of the Latin-script letter B/b.

• Speakers often use the corresponding forms of b-kirjain (“letter B, letter b”) instead of inflecting this word, especially in plural.

• b-kirjain

• beni

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.).

bee (Pular)

1. it must, it is necessary that

   iggey yimbe bee bonnii taariinde nde no feewi.

   (please add an English translation of this usage example)

• maal
• doole
• tilay
• say
• sey

• duwaa

• Oumar Bah, Dictionnaire Pular-Français, Avec un index français-pular, Webonary.org, SIL International, 2014.

• IPA^(key): /beʔe/

bee f pl (masc. bami, masc. plural bii, fem. bôko)

1. they (fem. or mixed gender)

• habee
• nâbee
• himiggêbee
• beena

An onomatopoeia.

• IPA^(key): [ˈbɛɛ]
• Hyphenation: bee
• Rhymes: -ɛ

bee

1. baa (sound of a sheep)
2. (childish) a word expressing bragging and mockery between children

• bee in Ittzés, Nóra (ed.). A magyar nyelv nagyszótára (‘A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006–2031 (work in progress; published A–ez as of 2024)

• be

Of imitative origin

bee

1. baa (sound of a sheep)
   • 116 BCE – 27 BCE, Marcus Terentius Varro, De Re Rustica 2.1.7, (The spelling "be" is also read in this passage[1]):

     nec multo secus nostri ab eadem voce, sed ab alia litera. vox earum non me, sed bee sonare videtur.

• “bee”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• bee in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

• IPA^(key): /beː/

bee

1. (anatomy) vagina

• IPA^(key): /biː/

From Old Irish bíad (“food”). Cognate with Irish bia and Scottish Gaelic biadh.

bee m (genitive singular bee, plural beeghyn)

1. food
2. provisions
3. nourishment
4. diet

• bee ny jeeghyn (“ambrosia”)
• bee millish (“sweetmeat, sweet”)
• bee moddee (“dog food”)

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

bee

1. inflection of ve:
   1. future
   2. second-person singular imperative

• be, beo, bey

From Old English bēo, from Proto-West Germanic *biju, from Proto-Germanic *bijō.

• IPA^(key): /beː/
• (Early Middle English) IPA^(key): /bøː/

bee (plural been or bees)

1. A bee (insect that collects pollen)
   • a. 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Summoner's Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales, lines 1693–1696:

     Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve, / Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve / Twenty thousand freres on a route / And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute...

     Just like bees swarm from a hive / Out of the devil's arse there were driven / Twenty thousand friars on a rout / And throughout hell they swarmed all about...

• English: bee
• Scots: bee, be, beye, bie, bea
• Yola: been (plural)

• “bẹ̄, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-11-24.

• IPA^(key): /pèː/

• Audio (NV)

  (file)

bee

1. with, by means of, by means of it

bee

1. second-person singular present subjunctive absolute of at·tá

bee

1. Obsolete form of behehe.

• bee in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN

bee

1. ant

• López Antonio, Joaquín, Jones, Ted, Jones, Kris (2012) Vocabulario breve del Zapoteco de San Juan Guelavía‎ (in Spanish), second electronic edition, Tlalpan, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, A.C., pages 13, 25

From Old Frisian bēthe, from Proto-Germanic *bai (“both”) + *sa (“the”). Cognates include West Frisian beide and German beide.

• IPA^(key): /beː/
• Hyphenation: bee
• Rhymes: -eː

bee

1. both

bee

1. both

• When used pronominally referring to two people (rather than objects or animals), the plural beeën is used.

• Marron C. Fort (2015) “bee”, in Saterfriesisches Wörterbuch mit einer phonologischen und grammatischen Übersicht, Buske, →ISBN

• Audio (Kenya)

  (file)

bee

1. Alternative form of abee

• wee (Tetun-Terik)

From Proto-Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian *waiʀ, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *wahiʀ.

bee

1. water (clear liquid H₂O)

bee (genitive [please provide], partitive [please provide])

1. The name of the Latin-script letter B/b.

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

• IPA^(key): /biː/

From Middle English by, be, from Old English bi, from Proto-West Germanic *bī. Cognates include English by and Scots by.

• bie, be, by

bee

1. by[1]

bee

1. Alternative form of ba (“to be”)
   • 1927, “ZONG OF TWI MAARKEET MOANS”, in THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD, page 129, lines 15[2]:

     Maa bee haghed i more caar an angish than Ich."

     May be upset in more care and hardship than I."

   • 1927, “ZONG O DHREE YOLA MYTHENS”, in THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD, page 131, lines 13[2]:

     Wu canna gow bee chapaal gaat,

     We cannot go to the chapel gate

2. Alternative form of ba (“are”)
   • 1927, “ZONG O DHREE YOLA MYTHENS”, in THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD, page 131, lines 1[2]:

     Haar wee bee dhree yola mydes,

     Here we are three old maids,

3. Alternative form of ba (“was”)
   • 1867, CONGRATULATORY ADDRESS IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, page 114, lines 21-23[1]:

     Ye pace——yea, we mai zei, ye vaste pace whilke bee ee-stent owr ye londe zince th'ast ee-cam,

     The peace——yes, we may say the profound peace—which overspreads the land since your arrival,