Citations:be

Verb: to exist

 * c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet:
 * To be or not to be, that is the question.

Verb: to exist, modifiable by adverbs

 * 1526, Bible, tr. William Tyndale, Matthew 2:
 * Rachel wepynge ffor her chyldren, and wolde nott be comforted because they were not.


 * 2014, Allan Bäck, Aristotle's Theory of Abstraction, Springer (ISBN 9783319047591), page 209:
 * [Aristotle says] that everything that exists is either a substance or an accident that depends for its existence on a substance's providing a substratum in which it may be. [...] Indeed, Aristotle claims that in the strict sense no item in an accidental category is:
 * [...] Therefore that which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must be substance. [Metaph. 1028a20–31]
 * Only an individual substance, like Socrates, is or exists strictly, without qualification.

Verb: forms the perfect aspect

 * 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel, lines 67-68
 * ‘I wish that he were come to me, / For he will come,’ she said.
 * 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems XXV, line 13
 * The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;

Verb: linking times

 * 1892, Great Britain. Public Record Office, East Indies and Persia, 1630, page 287 (quoting a paper from 1632?):
 * Complaint of Mr. Smethwicke that he went to the Secretary's office to see the order which appoints every Wednesday to debate the serious business of the Company, but found the Courts not registered since August was twelvemonth.

Verb: pertaining to times

 * 2012, Robert Moore, Where the Gold is Buried, a legend of Old Fort Niagara (ISBN 9781105635878), page 137:
 * "It's not two weeks yet," I reminded her, hoping that might somehow cheer her. [...] "Tomorrow is two weeks," Ruth said in a distant voice, staring into the flames.
 * 2018, Janet Knox, Patty and Jo, Detectives: The Case of the Toy Drummer, Wildside Press LLC (ISBN 9781479438150), page 13:
 * Thinking out loud, she said, “Tomorrow is a week since we&#39;ve been here, the date is the twentieth of June, what's so special about—June twentieth! Holy cow, it's our birthday!”