The Story of Be: A Verb's-Eye View of the English Language

by David Crystal

It's the most simple, unassuming, innocent-looking verb: 'to be'. Yet it is jam-packed with more different meanings, forms, and uses than any other English word. As he reveals be's multiple incarnations, David Crystal takes us to the heart of our flexible and changing language. He tells the intriguing story in 26 chapters, each linked to a particular usage. We meet circumstantial be ('how are you?'), numerical be ('two and two is four'), quotative be ('so I was like, "wow"'), and ludic be ('oh no he isn't!'), and a whole swarm of other meanings. Bringing the ideas to life are a host of examples from sources as varied as Beowulf, Jane Austen, pantomime, Hamlet (of course), and Star Wars, with cartoons from Ed McLachlan and Punch peppered throughout. Full of fascinating nuggets of information, it is a book to delight any lover of words and language.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Words

208 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4, 2017

About the author

David Crystal works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1941, he spent his early years in Holyhead. His family moved to Liverpool in 1951, and he received his secondary schooling at St Mary's College. He read English at University College London (1959-62), specialised in English language studies, did some research there at the Survey of English Usage under Randolph Quirk (1962-3), then joined academic life as a lecturer in linguistics, first at Bangor, then at Reading. He published the first of his 100 or so books in 1964, and became known chiefly for his research work in English language studies, in such fields as intonation and stylistics, and in the application of linguistics to religious, educational and clinical contexts, notably in the development of a range of linguistic profiling techniques for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. He held a chair at the University of Reading for 10 years, and is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. These days he divides his time between work on language and work on internet applications.

source: http://www.davidcrystal.com/

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently there are 1,812 meanings and uses for the verb be recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary - I'll just be taking the author's word for that - which David Crystal articulated some of the more interesting ones for us in this short, delightful book. I wasn't exactly astounded by any of the uses (ok, so one of them was incomprehensible, but that's just because I live in the USA, um, innit? [I may not have used that correctly]), but the author has a wonderful ability to write about concepts I don't even begin to have the words to convey. All the examples certainly helped improve my understanding.

But my favorite part of the book had to be historic developments in the various tenses and cases of the verb. To which I say, whoa! Just whoa! What a three-verb-origin-story mess (they used to use what for what???). It really makes me want to go around abusing be in whatever way I feel like. I mean, I won't. But I'll feel better about myself when I make embarrassing be-related mistakes.

[Darrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could read every book by David Crystal and end up with a master's degree in Linguistics when done. His books are always interesting and this one is no different. Taking a cue from the OED, Crystal explores the historic and contemporary usage of one of the English language's most interesting verbs...."be".

[Brad McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The verb "be" might be the most unique word in a language lousy with 'em. Each tense comes from a separate Old English word, that meant something slightly different.

Infinitive: bēon - to be
Present Tenses: eom/eart - is/are
Past Tenses: wesan - was

I wrote more of that in a blog post so I'll not get into that here because this book is more than just how the words came to be. It discusses 26 different ways we use the verb today...out of the 1,812 uses that the OED has recorded. (p. viii).

Some of my favs nuggets from the book:

The "Powers That Be" saying comes from Tynsdale's translation of the Bible. It's in Romans 13. (5)

Using a prefix with "be" to make new words was once very common. Now we have but two survivors: maybe and wannabe. (8)

Neither "become" nor "believe" came from the verb "be". (22)

We have "she is/she isn't" and "you are/you aren't" so if follows that we should have "I am/I amn't" but, "language has never been governed by logic." (36)

The non-standard "I's studying" isn't a contraction of "I is studying" but rather "I was studying" so there's nothing grammatically wrong with it. (94)

"Innit" made the Scrabble Bible in 2011. (121)

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent look at the most common verb in the English language. Over the course of twenty-six chapters, Crystal looks at the varied ways in which "to be" is used. Not as dense as many of his other works, but the examples across nearly a millennium of English writing are impressive. The book is too thin to be a textbook, but is nevertheless informative while also entertaining. Strong bent toward British variations and dialects, versus those from other parts of the globe, which lends itself to lots of wild conjugations I was entirely unfamiliar with, but if you ever need to express how you're feeling in Yorkshire or the West Midlands or Cornwell, etc., your vocabulary would be well stocked after reading this book.

[Christopher Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Thanks to its remarkable history, be has developed a greater range of meanings and uses, and a wider range of variant forms, than any other English word—1,812 so far recorded by the OED lexicographers, both in the standard language and in regional dialects.”

[Cheryl]

Cute cover but dry text. I wound up just reading the cartoons and some of the quotations.

"A poem should not mean/ But be" - Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica."

March 2025

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes me rethink all the times I have corrected grammar. Language is such an ever changing thing.

[Catsalive · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating stuff. Be is amazingly versatile. It is an 1812 overture of uses. Crystal is very clear & concise in his discussions but I think I'll have to read it again to be perfectly clear, innit?

[Michael Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy Crystal's shorter books about often overlooked aspects of language and English in general. This is one that has made me pay a little more attention to one of the smallest yet biggest words in English - the humble be.