behaviour

[ bih-heyv-yer ]

nounChiefly British.

usage note For behaviour

See -or1.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use behaviour in a sentence

  • Of course, I knew that many of them must have two behaviours, and that now they were on their good behaviour.

  • Let us therefore leave these softe and wanton behaviours to women.

    A Renaissance Courtesy-book | Giovanni Della Casa
  • We must not then, imitate ye common and rude behaviours of Dioneo.

    A Renaissance Courtesy-book | Giovanni Della Casa
  • Whose behaviours be full of follies and vaine glorie, which cometh of pride, growing of vanitie it selfe.

    A Renaissance Courtesy-book | Giovanni Della Casa
  • These fonde & foolish behaviours & fashions, paine a man as much to heare them, as to be drawne and haled with cordes.

    A Renaissance Courtesy-book | Giovanni Della Casa

British Dictionary definitions for behaviour

behaviour

US behavior

/ (bɪˈheɪvjə) /


noun
  1. manner of behaving or conducting oneself

  2. on one's best behaviour behaving with careful good manners

  1. psychol

    • the aggregate of all the responses made by an organism in any situation

    • a specific response of a certain organism to a specific stimulus or group of stimuli

  2. the action, reaction, or functioning of a system, under normal or specified circumstances

Origin of behaviour

1
C15: from behave; influenced in form by Middle English havior, from Old French havoir, from Latin habēre to have

Derived forms of behaviour

  • behavioural or US behavioral, adjective

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012