begin
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /bɪˈɡɪn/
ipa: /bəˈɡɪn/
ipa: /biˈɡɪn/
rhymes: -ɪn
Forms: form: begins
form: beginning
form: began
form: begun
form: no-table-tags
form: glossary
form: begin
form: begin
form: began
form: begin
form: beginnest
form: began
form: beganst
form: begannest
form: begins
form: beginneth
form: began
form: begin
form: began
form: begin
form: began
form: begin
form: -
form: beginning
form: begun
Etymology: From Middle English beginnen, from Old English beginnan (“to begin”), from Proto-West Germanic *biginnan, from Proto-Germanic *biginnaną (“to begin”), from be- + base verb *ginnaną also found in Old English onginnan.
Senses: examples: text: I began playing the piano at the age of five.
text: Now that everyone is here, we should begin the presentation.
text: The program begins at 9 o’clock on the dot.
text: I rushed to get to class on time, but the lesson had already begun.
text: The Apoſtle begins our Knowledge in the Creatures, which lead us to the Knowledge of God, if we will make uſe of our Reaſon: [...]
ref: a. 1705, John Locke, “An Examination of P[ère] Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God”, in Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke: […], London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], published 1706, →OCLC, paragraph 41, page 175:
text: Ye Nymphs of Solyma! begin the ſong: / To heav'nly themes ſublimer ſtrains belong.
ref: 1712 (date written), Alexander Pope, “Messiah. A Sacred Eclogue, in Imitation of Virgil’s Pollio.”, in The Works of Alexander Pope Esq. […], volume I, London: […] J[ohn] and P[aul] Knapton, H. Lintot, J[acob] and R[ichard] Tonson, and S. Draper, published 1751, →OCLC, page 37, lines 1–2:
text: Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 48:
text: Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: As Andrew, in particular, began to work on renovation and improvement, his talk about this began to be peppered with references to 'bodgery' — 'When I look at it, all I see is bodgery, he says recurrently, with a mixture of exclamation and despair.
ref: 2007, Nicky Gregson, Living with Things: Ridding, Accommodation, Dwelling, page 48:
text: Similarly, the biotech giant Cargill has begun manufacturing a polymer from vegetable oils that is used in polyurethane foams, which is found in beddings, furniture and car-seat headrests.
ref: 2008 April 9, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “Harnessing Biology, and Avoiding Oil, for Chemical Goods”, in The New York Times:
text: State begins fouling and UCLA misses a couple of front-end free throws on one-and-ones.
ref: 2009, Brandon Lang, Stanley Cohen, Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper, →ISBN:
text: Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia.
ref: 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:
glosses: To start, to initiate or take the first step into something.
examples: text: Vast chain of being! which from God began.
ref: 1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], (please specify |epistle=I to IV), London: […] J[ohn] Wilford, […], →OCLC:
glosses: To come into existence.
Synonyms: word: begin
word: commence
word: go
word: inchoate
word: initiate
word: open
word: get
word: originate
word: rock and roll
word: start
Hyponyms: word: inaugurate
word: blaze a trail
word: break ground
word: break new ground
word: get underway
word: launch
word: leave
word: execute
word: run
word: set about
word: take steps
Derived terms: begin at the wrong end
beginnable
beginner
beginning
begin upon
begin with the chucky
misbegun
rebegin
to begin with
unbegun