Dictionaries › English

ben

Pronunciation: /bɛn/

The English word “ben” has 11 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A prayer; a petition.
  2. The inner room of a two-room cottage (as opposed to the but); the ben room.
  3. A tree, Moringa oleifera or horseradish tree of Arabia and India, which produces oil of ben.
  4. The winged seed of the ben tree.
  5. The oil of the ben seed.
  6. Son of (used with Hebrew and Arabic surnames).
  7. A Scottish or Irish mountain or high peak.
  8. A benefit (performance to raise funds).

preposition

  1. In, into.

adverb

  1. Inside.

adjective

  1. Inner, interior.

Etymology

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.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “ben” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.