To Be or Not to Be
Thoughts on the most profound combination of letters in our language.
by Carolyn Clare Givens
If I’m asked for advice for aspiring writers, one of the first things that comes to mind is that you have to love words. They are, after all, the tools of the craft for a writer. If a painter didn’t care about paintbrushes or paint pigments, she probably wouldn’t be a very good painter. If a writer doesn’t love words, he’s probably not going to be a particularly interesting writer.
In my own life as a logophile, I’ve delighted in long and surprising words, but I’ve also found wonder in one of our shortest English words: “be.” Though it is but little, it is mighty. (Since I already quoted the Bard in the title, I might as well riff on him here.)
“Be” is utterly existential, to the extent that God uses the verb to name himself: I AM (Exod. 3:14). The “to be” verb is foundational to our language—and every writer works against the tendency to use it in place of stronger, more vibrant verbs.
It is also, for being our most common verb, one of the most irregular. If you recall your conjugation lessons:
Infinitive: to be
Please note, the letter “b” doesn’t show up in any of our standard conjugations of the infinitive.
In fact, in many of the languages that use a “to be” verb (some don’t! Deep dive on “zero copula” sometime), it conjugates irregularly. This is probably because of its commonality: because we use it all the time (and have, since the formation of our language), we don’t forget its variations and, therefore, have never needed to standardize it.
But “be” is not only a verb in our language. It also is a prefix that’s more common than we think.
In a recent episode about emotion words from one of my favorite podcasts, Words Unravelled with RobWords and Jess Zafarris, the hosts got into a short discussion about “be-”
Jess: I do love the BE prefix, by the way. It does all sorts of fun things. I have a whole video on all the nonsense that BE can do.
But one notable emotion that BE is attached to is bereaved, which is the idea that something has been violently taken away from you. It's so much heavier and more visceral than the word bereaved almost sounds.
Rob: Yeah, BE, that combination of letters is perhaps the most profound in our language, actually, because it is literally to be. But it is also when added to the front of something, it is to imbue something with an emotion or a condition.
Jess: Or it can be, it can be privative too. It can take something away, like in BEHEAD.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, to BEHEAD definitely does not mean to endow with a head.
In the video she mentions, Jess (who is the author of various etymology books—some of which are just for grown-ups), explains that be- as a prefix is unrelated to the verb, but more related to the preposition “by.”
It’s most common meaning, she notes, is “all around, or on all sides.” We see this in bejeweled, bespatter, besiege, bedeck. It also is in bewilder, “which figuratively means to be lost in a mental wilderness.”
She digs into the privative nature of the prefix, too—that is, how it can deprive you of something: behead, bemuse (robbed of thought).
And it can be causative, that is, the cause of something. Like the word befuddle, which Jess says, “fuddle was a 16th century word meaning ‘to get drunk’ so to be ‘befuddled’ is to be confused as if drunk or otherwise intoxicated.” We see it in this use also in become, beget, befriend, befall.
Jess points out that be- can turn an intransitive verb (doesn’t take an object) into a transitive verb (does take an object) – wail becomes bewail; grudge becomes begrudge; moan becomes bemoan.
We don’t use these words nearly as much as our linguistic elders—in the 15th and 16th centuries, words like bethwack – to thrash soundly; befool – to make a fool of; and betongue – to verbally thrash, were in use.
Rob’s observation that “B-E, that combination of letters is perhaps the most profound in our language” is not hyperbole.
Those two little letters carry a lot of freight in English and demand a closer look from the word lovers among us.
Also, related-ish: have you seen this video of several well-known British thespians giving advice on the best way to give Hamlet’s soliloquy? It’s hilarious. There’s a full-length version on FB, too.
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“We aren’t writers so much as gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas.”
Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark
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I snort-laughed at “bethwack” 😂
I be fascinated!