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ben

nounprepositionadverbadjectivenounnounnounnounadjectivenounnountop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • //bɛn//
  • //bɪn//

In, into.

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteA prayer; a petition.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *bōjana Proto-Indo-European *-nis Proto-Germanic *-niz Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-nis Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂-ni-s Proto-Germanic *bōniz Proto-West Germanic *bōni Old English bēn Middle English ben, beneder. English ben From Middle English ben, bene, from Old English bēn (“prayer, request, favor, compulsory service”), from Proto-West Germanic *bōni, from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to say”). Related to ban. More at boon.

preposition

  1. 1

    In, into.

    And he was waving to me to creep in, so I just did and then just to skip ben the front and then in the lobby.

Etymology

From Middle English ben, bene, variation of bin, binne (“within”), from Old English binnan (“within, in, inside of, into”), equivalent to be- + in.

adverb

  1. 1

    Inside.

adjective

  1. 1

    Inner, interior.

noun

  1. 1

    The inner room of a two-room cottage (as opposed to the but); the ben room.

    Bert Kerston was awakened by a steady tap on the ben window.

noun

  1. 1

    A tree, Moringa oleifera or horseradish tree of Arabia and India, which produces oil of ben.

  2. 2

    The winged seed of the ben tree.

  3. 3

    The oil of the ben seed.

Etymology

From Middle English been, from Old French and Medieval Latin, probably from a North African pronunciation of Arabic بَان (bān, “ben tree”).

noun

  1. 1

    Son of (used with Hebrew and Arabic surnames).

Etymology

From Arabic بِن (bin) and Hebrew בן (ben, “son”).

noun

  1. 1

    A Scottish or Irish mountain or high peak.

Etymology

Borrowed from Scots ben, benn, from Scottish Gaelic beinn.

adjective

  1. 1

    Variant of beneobsoleteAlternative spelling of bene; good.

    A gage of ben Rom-bouse, / In a bousing-ken of Rom-vile, / Is benar than a Caster, / Pecke, pennam, lay, or popler, / Which we mill in deuse a vile.

Etymology

c. 16th century. Probably from Latin bene or Italian bene.

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteA benefit (performance to raise funds).

    In the Chronicles of the Stage, some curious particulars are given relating to Sir Henry Herbert and the well-known Sir William Davidson, by which we learn, amongst other things, that a “ben” or benefit at Drury Lane, two centuries ago, was worth a hundred pounds.

Etymology

Shortening.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of binAlternative form of bin.

Forms

plural
bens
comparative
benner, benar
superlative
benmost, benat
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).