به

به (plural به-به or به۲, informal 1st possessive بهکو, 2nd possessive بهمو, 3rd possessive بهڽ)

1. Jawi spelling of bah (“flood”)‎

به (plural به-به or به۲, informal 1st possessive بهکو, 2nd possessive بهمو, 3rd possessive بهڽ)

1. Jawi spelling of bah (“father”)‎

به (plural به-به or به۲, informal 1st possessive بهکو, 2nd possessive بهمو, 3rd possessive بهڽ)

1. Jawi spelling of bah (“father”)‎

به (plural به-به or به۲, informal 1st possessive بهکو, 2nd possessive بهمو, 3rd possessive بهڽ)

1. Jawi spelling of bah (“language”)‎

به

1. Jawi spelling of bah (“under, below”)‎

• IPA^(key): /ba/

به • (ba)

1. will (indicating future action)

From Middle Persian 𐭯𐭥𐭭 (pʿn) / PWN (pad, “to, at, in, on”), from Old Persian 𐎱𐎫𐎡𐎹 (patiy), from Proto-Iranian *pati-.

• Audio (Iran):

  (file)

به • (be)

1. Expresses the indirect object: to; for

   به من بگو. ― be man begu. ― Tell me.

   نصیحت من به شما این است.

   nasihat-e man be šomâ in ast.

   This is my advice to you.

2. Expresses the direction of movement: to; towards; into

   راه‌های رسیدن به خوشحالی

   râh-hâ-ye residan be xošhâli

   ways to reach happiness

   وزیر خارجه ترکیه به تهران رفت.

   vazir-e xâreje-ye torkiye be tehrân raft.

   The Foreign Minister of Turkey went to Tehran.

3. Forms adverbial phrases of manner: by, -ly

   به سرعت ― be sor'at ― quickly

   به زور ― be zur ― by force, forcibly

4. Indicates the language of a text, speech, etc.: in

   به فارسی ― be fârsi ― in Persian

5. Used to form vows: by, in

   به نام خدا ― be nâm-e xodâ ― in the name of God

(Orthography)

• Until the early 1900s, به (be) was almost always written joined to the next word:

  باو (be u)

Instead of modern

به او (be u)

However, this is now done only for common adverbial constructions formed with به (be), and even that not consistently. In other cases, it is always written as a separate word. When older works are republished, به (be) is often edited to be separate.

(Use with inflectional enclitics)

• While in literary Persian inflectional endings are never attached to prepositions, in many spoken varieties of Persian this is not the case. In the dialect of Tehran, the preposition به (be) has a /h/ inserted before inflectional endings starting with a vowel, while the dialect of Mashhad has a /z/ instead. For example, while one may say "to him" as به او (be u) (or archaically بدو (bed-u)) in literary Iranian Persian, in spoken dialects one would instead typically attach the inflectional ending ـش (-aš, pronounced in most dialects as -eš), forming بهش (beheš) in Tehrani and بذش (bezeš) in Mashhadi. See the table below for other examples:^[1][2]

• Note that this is not unique to به (be), and other prepositions such as با (bâ) and از (az) are also inflected in many spoken varieties of Persian.

• بد (bed, bad), بذ (bez, baz) (archaic or dialectal, Mashhad)
• بم (bəm) (dialectal, Herati)

• MacKenzie, D. N. (1971) “pad”, in A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, page 62

Persian Wikipedia has an article on:

به

Wikipedia ^fa

From Middle Persian (byh /⁠bēh⁠/, “quince”). This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

• بهی (behi)
• بی (beyy) (in Isfahani dialect)

به • (beh)

1. quince

• → Avar: бигь (bih)
• → Georgian: ბია (bia)
  • → Abkhaz: а-биа (a-bja)
  • → Laz: ბიჲა (biya) — Chkhala
  • → Mingrelian: ბია (bia)
  • → Ossetian: биа (bia) — Digor
• → Lak: бигь (bih)
• → Northern Kurdish: bîhok

• MacKenzie, D. N. (1971) “bēh”, in A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, page 18

From Middle Persian ŠPYL / wyh (weh, “better, good”), from Old Persian 𐎺𐎢 (vahu, “good”), from Proto-Iranian *Hwáhuš, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hwásuš, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁wésus (“good”). Related to Old Armenian վեհ (veh, “sublime”), an Iranian borrowing.

به • (beh)

1. (archaic) good, excellent

   Synonym: خوب (xub)

2. (archaic) better

   Synonym: بهتر (behtar)

   • c. 1260s, Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī, translated by Reynold A. Nicholson, مثنوی معنوی [Masnavi-ye-Ma'navi], volume I, verse 2925:

     بَاغْبَان هَم دَانَد آن رَا دَر خَزَان / لیک دِیدِ یَک بِهْ اَز دِیدِ جَهَان

     bāğbān ham dānad ān rā dar xazān / lēk dīd-i yak bih az dīd-i jahān

     The Gardener knows that (difference) even in autumn, but the One's sight is better than the world's sight.

3. (archaic) elegant
4. (archaic) safe, sound

• Steingass, Francis Joseph (1892) “به”, in A Comprehensive Persian–English dictionary, London: Routledge & K. Paul
• MacKenzie, D. N. (1971) “weh”, in A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, page 89