b

B3
phoneme/b/letter, name/biː/

character

The second letter of the English alphabet, called bee and written in the Latin script.

Similar
bacillusB-complex vitaminB complexvitamin B complexvitamin BB vitaminboronatomic number 5
Very commonScrabble 3

Meanings

b1

character

uppercase B · plural bs · plural b's

  1. letterlowercaseThe second letter of the English alphabet, called bee and written in the Latin script.
numeral

uppercase B · plural bs · plural b's

  1. lowercaseThe second numeral symbol of the English alphabet, called bee and written in the Latin script.

b2

adjectiveb (not comparable)
  1. abbreviationnot comparableAbbreviation of born.
symbol
  1. natural sciencesbarn
  2. computingbit
  3. ball gamesbye
  4. sizebig

b3

verb
  1. InternetabbreviationAbbreviation of be.

    ima prolly b at home tn

    4 more examples

    i am looking for any safari i am trying to fill my dex and it would b rly nice :D especially fire,ice, flying, since i don't a lot of those but everyone is welcome to add me :DD

    2020 February 27, u/Sneasel_, “adding everyone!”, in Reddit, r/friendsafari, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023

    if u aren't tryna b like this don't hmu

    2021 October 27, @heluvstat, Twitter, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023

    I wanna b like those girls who study NON STOP and are basically addicted to studying, any tips?

    2023 October 27, u/electriccitydrive, “How do I become obsessed with studying”, in Reddit, r/GetStudying, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023

    school pizza party pizza b like

    2023 November 6, @1tyreece, Twitter, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023

B4

character

lowercase b · plural Bs · plural B's

  1. letteruppercaseThe second letter of the English alphabet, called bee and written in the Latin script.

    Boxer could not get beyond the letter D. He would trace out A, B, C, D, in the dust with his great hoof […]

    1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC
numeral

lowercase b · plural Bs · plural B's

  1. uppercaseThe second numeral symbol of the English alphabet, called bee and written in the Latin script.

B5

nounB (usually uncountable, plural Bs)

plural Bs

  1. uncountableusuallyThe quantity one billion (1,000,000,000), usually used to signify a sum of money.

    $2.8 B

    two point eight billion dollars (i.e., $2,800,000,000)

  2. UKuncountableusuallyThe grade of pencil, “black”, that makes darker marks than grade HB but lighter marks than grade 2B; a pencil with soft lead.
  3. abbreviationuncountableusuallyboard gamesAbbreviation of bishop.

    1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. d4 exd4 4. e5 Ne4 5. Qxd4 d5 6. exd6 e.p. Nxd6 7. Bg5 Nc6 8. Qe3+ Be7 9. Nbd2 0-0 10. 0-0-0 Re8 11. Kb1 (=)

    2022, “2023 Laws of Chess”, in FIDE, page 23
    1 more example

    The correct answer is 1.Rxf6 Rxf6 2.Rf1 Raf8 3.Qg5 Kg7 4.Nh5+ Other sub-variations work, such as playing 2.Qg5 then 3.Rf1 or playing 4.Bxf6+ first before playing 5.Nh5+.

    2023 August 12, GM Noël Studer, “Mastering Chess Puzzles: The Comprehensive Guide to Effective Problem Solving”, in Next Level Chess
  4. uncountableusuallyball gamesThe number of balls faced by a batsman.
  5. uncountableusuallyentertainmentBass.
  6. AustraliacountableeuphemisticusuallyBastard.

    I mean, some little B put in a protest because apparently a pineapple isn't strictly a flower.

    2003, Gina Riley and Jane Turner, That's Unusual, Sydney: ABC Books, page 153
  7. countableeuphemisticusuallyBitch.

    Yo, I got this bad B coming from upsy. She just wanna bruck her back and give ucky.

    2020 March 26, “Chucky”performed by Dezzie
    2 more examples

    [quoting an ethnographer’s account:] He then called me a “dumb B” and hung up the phone. Meredith pauses, looks at Graciela, and says, “Okay, I need you to be as specific as you can, so that means you’re going to have to tell me what he called you, exactly.” […] Graciela grabs the pen and writes down, “Dumb Bitch.” […] Robert then arrived at my house that day to see our son and upon leaving said, “I’ll see you in court you Dumb B.”

    2011 December 25, Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, Linda L. Shaw, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Second Edition, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 99

    And then he looked again and she wasn’t there. So he probably thought, ‘Stupid B’. You know.

    2016 May 23, Caron Lipman, Co-habiting with Ghosts: Knowledge, Experience, Belief and the Domestic Uncanny, Routledge, →ISBN, page 179
  8. Multicultural London Englishabbreviationuncountableusuallychiefly African-American VernacularAbbreviation of blood or blud: used to address a friend, especially a male.

    You’re a fuckboy whose most used phrase is, "wag one b, wys?"[.] Pulling girls at Gravity Monday is the highlight of your week. You constantly send selfies flexing your muscles and showing off your ‘six pack.’

    2018 October 8, Ruby Bloom, “What your favourite social media says about you”, in The Tab
  9. countableusuallyimmunologyA B cell.

    Mind your Bs and Ts […] And if the combined efforts of macrophages, b cells and t cells are sufficient, the pathogen will be beaten back and eventually cleared from the body.

    2020 May 2, “Leaving lockdown means understanding immune responses to the virus”, in The Economist
symbol
  1. computingbyte

B6

nounB (plural Bs)

plural Bs

  1. A personality type describing people who are relaxed and easygoing and able to engage in leisure activities without worrying about work.
  2. An academic grade, better than a C and worse than an A.
  3. Signifies a second-tier or second class of a given commodity, group, or category, as in B-movie, B-list, etc.

    The television studio revived some of its B characters for the spinoff.

    1 more example

    The baddest of the Bs, then, are a rare, precious mix of jerry-built production values and jazzed-up creative juices. But that’s not to say that even with a budget, a B movie can’t still bounce way off the wall, […]

    1999, Michael Sauter, The Worst Movies of All Time, Or, What Were They Thinking?, page 268
  4. The alternate or secondary part, such as the back side of a phonograph record. Contrasted with ‘A’, which is the primary part.
  5. entertainmentThe seventh note in the C major scale.
  6. entertainmentA major chord having the notes B–D♯–F♯ as the root, third, and fifth; the major scale with B as its keynote.

    He ordered Chet's guitar course COD Makes A, E, workin' on B Digs C&W an' R&B An' me an' a chimpanzee agree That one day soon he'll be A celebrity.

    1969, “Gitarzan”, Ray Stevens, Bill Everette (lyrics), performed by Ray Stevens

B7

proper noun
  1. computer languagesA programming language from which C is derived.

Synonyms & antonyms

nounaerobic rod-shaped spore-producing bacterium; often occurring in chainlike formations; found primarily in soil

Similar
Broader

nounoriginally thought to be a single vitamin but now separated into several B vitamins

Similar
B-complex vitaminB complexvitamin B complexvitamin BB vitamin
Broader
water-soluble vitamin

nouna trivalent metalloid element; occurs both in a hard black crystal and in the form of a yellow or brown powder

Similar
boronatomic number 5

nouna logarithmic unit of sound intensity equal to 10 decibels

Similar
Broader
sound unit

nounthe blood group whose red cells carry the B antigen

Similar
type Bgroup B

noun(physics) a unit of nuclear cross section; the effective circular area that one particle presents to another as a target for an encounter

Similar
Broader
area unitsquare measure

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

B · character, numeral

From the Old English letter B, from 7th century replacement by Latin B of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc letter ᛒ (b, beorc).

Full word history & related roots →

B · noun, symbol

From abbreviations of various terms beginning with or containing the letter ‘B’. * (billion): abbreviation of billion * (cricket): abbreviation of balls * (bitch): abbreviation of bitch

Full word history & related roots →

B · noun

From the use of the letter ‘B’ as an arbitrary label among other letter labels. * (personality type): from contrast with the letter ‘A’ and its corresponding personality type * (academic grade): from the position of the letter ‘B’ in the English alphabet

Full word history & related roots →

B · proper noun

Possibly a contraction of BCPL (“Basic Combined Programming Language”), the name of a programming language from which B was derived. Dennis Ritchie (a coworker of B’s designer, Ken Thompson) speculated that B might be based on Bon (the name of an earlier, but unrelated, programming language that Thompson designed for use on Multics), itself either from Bonnie (the name of Thompson’s wife) or “(according to an encyclopedia quotation in its manual), after a religion whose rituals involve the murmuring of magic formulas”.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Czech H
  • Hmusical note
Esperanto bit
  • bitin computing
Finnish t (tavu), h
  • t (tavu)byte
  • hmusical note
French o (octet), si
  • o (octet)byte
  • simusical note
German H
  • Hmusical note

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with b

All rhymes →

Sounds the same

Cite this entry
APA

b. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/b

MLA

“b.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/b. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “b,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/b.

Source: b on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.