belong
Americanverb (used without object)
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belongs,
present (3rd person singular)
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belonged,
past participle, past
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belonging
present participle
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to be in the relation of a member, adherent, inhabitant, etc. (usually followed byto ).
He belongs to the Knights of Columbus.
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to have the proper qualifications, especially social qualifications, to be a member of a group.
You don't belong in this club.
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to be proper or due; be properly or appropriately placed, situated, etc..
Books belong in every home. This belongs on the shelf. He is a statesman who belongs among the great.
verb phrase
verb
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(foll by to) to be the property or possession (of)
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(foll by to) to be bound to (a person, place, or club) by ties of affection, dependence, allegiance, or membership
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to be classified (with)
this plant belongs to the daisy family
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(foll by to) to be a part or adjunct (of)
this top belongs to the smaller box
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to have a proper or usual place
that plate belongs in the cupboard
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informal to be suitable or acceptable, esp socially
although they were rich, they just didn't belong
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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belongsimple
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belongssimple
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have belongedperfect
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has belongedperfect
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am belongingprogressive
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are belongingprogressive
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is belongingprogressive
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have been belongingperfect progressive
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has been belongingperfect progressive
Past
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belongedsimple
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had belongedperfect
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was belongingprogressive
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were belongingprogressive
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had been belongingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of belong
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English belongen, from be- be- + longen “to belong,” verb derivative of long (adjective), Old English gelang “belonging to, dependent on”; cf. along ( def. ), long 3 ( def. )
Explanation
Things that belong to you are your property — in other words, you own them. Your prized rock collection belongs to you. There are several ways to use the verb belong. Items you buy or that are given to you belong to you. You also belong to a group of friends — you fit in, or are a member. When you feel at home somewhere, as though you're meant to be there, you also belong: "I belong in a big city!" The 14th century meaning of belong was "to go along with," from be- and longen, "to go."
Vocabulary lists containing belong
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We teach judges what the science shows while leaving the legal conclusions where they belong: with the judges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
Azerbaijanis belong to a Turkic group of nations, speaking a language close to Turkish, and Turkey is its closest ally.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
I lived at the Chateau Marmont for the better part of three years, then I bought an apartment in New York and went back to where I really belong.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026
You don’t own a boat or belong to an expensive country club, and you have $4 million in investments waiting for you to tap.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 13, 2026
It’s like time has stopped, and we’re island creatures returned to the sea where we belong.
From "Across So Many Seas" by Ruth Behar
Taken together, the mental hospital hoax belongs to the same family of attacks.
From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2026
The dinosaur, named Invictibellatrix amberina, is described in a new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science and belongs to a group of agile, two-legged carnivores called megaraptorans.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
He belongs to a generation too young to have experienced the vibrant cultural scene that teemed in Havana for decades.
From Barron's ● Oct. 13, 2026
Fe5GeTe2, discovered seven years ago, belongs to a family of materials known as van der Waals magnets.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 2, 2026
In the history of modern art, that honor belongs to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
There was a reason these contraptions belonged to the Chili’s end of the dining spectrum.
From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2026
Some went to places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to which the winged feline has belonged since 1985.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026
The house, with origins in the 15th Century, belonged to textile, fashion and retail entrepreneur Laura Ashley and her husband Bernard and owned by the family until his death in 2009.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
A group of former Cornell students, who belonged to the same Chi Phi fraternity as the seven accused but graduated before the alleged incident, also complained of online smear campaigns.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
He was the only mushroom in the garden who had not been transplanted, the only one who truly belonged exactly where he was.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
As the search gets under way, the focus is on any paper in the cells - the books and letters belonging to inmates.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2026
At the heart of the legal argument is an attribution study published in a journal belonging to the Nature group, which estimates that climate change intensified the extreme rainfall in 2024 by 12 percent.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
Regional tensions remained elevated after Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said a building belonging to Saudi Aramco in Dhahran was targeted Tuesday evening.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
Most of these finds were identified as belonging to known species named from neighboring South Africa.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 13, 2026
In Sungir, Russia, archaeologists discovered in 1955 a 30,000-year-old burial site belonging to a mammoth-hunting culture.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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