Meaning & use
being
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Meanings
nouncountable
A living creature, especially a person, or an imagined creature that has thoughts or feelings.
Grammar: Countable: a being, two beings; often follows an adjective like human or living.
Patterns
- a human being
- a living being
Every human being deserves clean water and a safe home.
In the story, a being made of light visits the village.
Scientists asked whether other living beings experience pain.
noununcountableformal
The fact or state of existing.
Grammar: Uncountable and often in the phrase come into being: no plural form.
Patterns
- come into being
- bring something into being
The club came into being in 1987 when five neighbors met in a garage.
Philosophers have long asked what gives anything its being.
The new law brought a national park into being.
noununcountableliterary
A person's inner nature, the deepest part of who they are.
Grammar: Usually appears in a fixed phrase with a possessive: with all my being.
Patterns
- with your whole being
- in your very being
She wanted, with her whole being, to see her family again.
Fear ran through his entire being as the lights went out.
Music seemed to fill her being with calm.
Word forms
| plural | beings |
|---|
Common combinations
- human being
- A human being can survive weeks without food but only days without water.
- come into being
- The tradition came into being after the great flood.
- living being
- The law treats animals as living beings that can suffer.
- supreme being
- Many religions believe in a supreme being.
- well-being
- Regular sleep is vital to your well-being.
Synonyms and how they differ
- creature
- Creature suggests an animal or something strange, while being is more often used for a thinking person or spirit.
- existence
- Existence stresses the plain fact of being alive or real, and it is the more common word in everyday speech.
- person
- Person is the everyday word for an individual human, whereas being includes non-human or imagined minds.
- entity
- Entity is a cold, formal word for anything that exists separately, even a company, which being never describes.
Opposites
Word family
- be verb
- to exist or to have a quality
- well-being noun
- the state of being healthy and content
- human being noun
- a person
- wellbeing noun
- a variant spelling of well-being
Commonly confused: being or been? being or bean?
being vs been
Been is the past participle of be, as in I have been there; being is the -ing form or the noun.
being vs bean
Bean sounds like been in some accents but is a seed or vegetable and is unrelated in meaning.
Practice
Choose the sentence in which 'being' is a noun meaning existence.
Choose one answer.
In 'came into being' the word is a noun meaning existence. In the other sentences being is a verb form used in a continuous or participle construction.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “being”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.