been

American

[bin, ben] / bɪn, bɛn /

verb

past participle of be.

been British

/ biːn, bɪn /

verb

the past participle of be 1

"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

Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

been

The company also said “the backlog of email messages has been processed.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2026

After the game, Walk-Green said he had been itching to get on the field.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 14, 2026

"If I start climbing that table, it means we've been successful as a team."

From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2026

On its website, the company said all its products were operational, including its Microsoft 365 subscription service for apps such as Teams and Excel that had been widely down.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2026

Tonight, we’re having dinner with the woman Dad’s been dating for the past two months.

From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023