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"B" Word Origins

Where do words come from? Trace the origin and history of any English word, from its Latin, Greek or Old English roots through to its modern meaning. Every etymology is sourced.

“B” Word Origins

baze
German
Likely related to Dutch bazen or verbazen ("to astonish, stupefy") and an old German word basen ("to rave").
bazinga
Origin
Probably from zing. Appears to originate from the X-Files season 7 episode "Hollywood A.D." Popularized as the catchphrase of the character Sheldon Cooper on the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
bazoo
Origin
Probably from Dutch bazuin (“trumpet”). First attested in the mid 19th c..
bazooka
Dutch · 2010
Named after an earlier slang term for a crude trombone-like instrument, itself from a Dutch word for "trumpet"; the finance sense appeared during the European debt crisis around 2010.
BBC
English
An initialism. In the broadcasting sense it stands for British Broadcasting Corporation; in the slang sense it stands for big black cock.
BBL
English
An initialism used independently in several fields; the cosmetic-surgery sense became the dominant one in general search during the 2010s and 2020s.
bbm
English
An initialism of BlackBerry Messenger.
bbs
English
An initialism of be back soon; the computing sense is an initialism of bulletin board system.
BBW
English
An initialism of big beautiful woman.
BCC
English
An initialism of blind carbon copy, from the carbon paper once used to make duplicate copies of typed letters.
BCE
English
An initialism of Before Common Era.
BDE
English
An initialism of big dick energy. Despite the phrase, the quality it names is a manner rather than anything anatomical, and it is applied to people of any gender.
bdsm
Origin
Contracted initialism of B&D + D/s + S&M, meaning respectively bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism.
be
Old English
From Old English "bēon," combined over time with two other Old English verbs ("wesan" and forms giving us "am," "is," "are") that all meant roughly "to exist" — which is why "be" has such an unusually irregular set of forms (am, is, are, was, were, been).
Bea
French
Initialism of French BEA (“Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation civile”).
beach
Old English
From an old English dialect word for a stream or sandbank, related to German "Bach" ("brook").
beacham
Origin
From Middle English, from Old French Beauchamp.
beached
Origin
From "beach" plus "-ed."
beachem
Origin
From Middle English, from Old French Beauchamp.
beachhead
Origin
From "beach" plus "head," originally a military term.
beacon
Old English
From Old English "bēacn," meaning "sign" or "signal," related to the word "buoy."
bead
Old English
From Old English "bed," meaning "prayer," since strings of beads were originally used to count prayers — the object eventually took the name of the act it helped track.
beadwork
Origin
From bead + work.
beady
Origin
From bead + -y, describing something that looks like a small round bead.
beagle
Old French
Origin disputed — possibly from an Old French phrase meaning "one who keeps their mouth open," or from Middle English bedel ("beadle," an officer who enforced rules), with the sound shifting over time.
beak
Old French
From Old French bec, ultimately from a Gaulish Celtic word meaning "pointed stick" or "peg."
beaker
Late Latin
From Old Norse bikarr ("cup"), itself likely traceable back to a Late Latin word for a wine jug. It shares a root with "pitcher."
beal
Old English
From Old English bȳle, meaning "boil" or "swelling" — the same root that gave us the modern word "boil."
beam
Old English
From Old English bēam, which originally meant "tree" or "piece of wood" — the sense survives in words like "boom" (a ship's spar) and in some plant names.
beamer
Origin
From beam + -er — something that produces or projects a beam (of light, in the case of a projector).
beamful
Origin
From beam + -ful.
beamsome
Origin
From beam + -some.
beamy
Origin
From Middle English beami, bemi, equivalent to beam + -y.
bean
Old English
From Old English bēan, an ancient Germanic word for the bean plant, related to similar words across many European languages.
beanbag
Origin
A straightforward compound of bean + bag, describing a bag stuffed with bean-like filling.
beanbrain
Origin
From bean + brain.
beaner
Origin
From bean + -er. Literally "a person who eats beans", since beans are a staple of Mexican cuisine, and eaten in Boston as Boston baked beans.
beanie
Origin
From bean (slang for "head") + the diminutive suffix -ie.
beano
Origin
Clipping of beanfeast + -o.
beanpole
Origin
From bean + pole, originally the literal stake used to support bean vines.
beanstalk
Origin
From bean + stalk, most famous from the fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk."
beantown
Origin
From bean + town, in reference to Boston baked beans.
bear
Old English
From Old English bera, probably originally an epithet meaning "the brown one" — some scholars think ancient Germanic peoples avoided using the animal's real name out of superstition.
bear market
English
From bear, long used in English stock-market slang for someone selling in expectation of falling prices, plus market.
bearable
Origin
From bear (to endure) + the suffix -able.
beard
Latin
From Old English beard, an ancient Germanic word for facial hair, related to Latin barba (which also gives us "barber" and "barb").
bearded
Middle English
From Middle English berded, either from Old English ġebearded or formed anew in Middle English; by surface analysis, beard + -ed. Compare Dutch bebaarde (“bearded”), Middle Low German bārt (“bearded”), archaic German gebartet (“bearded”).
beardfish
Origin
From beard + fish, because of its barbels.