behave
Americanverb (used without object)
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to act in a particular way; conduct or comport oneself or itself.
The ship behaves well.
- Synonyms:
- perform
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to act properly.
Did the child behave?
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to act or react under given circumstances.
This plastic behaves strangely under extreme heat or cold.
verb (used with object)
verb
-
(intr) to act or function in a specified or usual way
-
to conduct (oneself) in a specified way
he behaved badly towards her
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to conduct (oneself) properly or as desired
the child behaved himself all day
Other Word Forms
- unbehaving adjective
- well-behaved adjective
Etymology
Origin of behave
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English behaven “to behave oneself”; equivalent to be- + have
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.
Meanwhile, electrons inside the bulk of the material do not join this pairing and continue to behave like ordinary electrons.
From Science Daily
You’d be unwise to look to the movies for economic insight—this one amounts to an extended fatuous argument that an individual who behaved like a corporate restructuring would be a psychopath.
Cause and effect run across many scales at once, from ion channels to dendrites to circuits to whole-brain dynamics, and these levels do not behave like independent modules stacked in layers.
From Science Daily
“And now they are behaving exactly like the people they like to take down.”
From Los Angeles Times
In lab experiments with cultured cells, this AbLec changed how immune cells behaved, pushing them to attack and kill cancer cells.
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
