the.com/are
the verb that turns 'you' into a crowd and 'they' into a verdict
means The present-tense plural and second-person form of the verb 'to be,' used to link subjects like 'you,' 'we,' and 'they' to what they are.
from A piece of the great patchwork verb 'to be,' which English assembled from several unrelated old roots. 'Are' descends from Old English 'earun'/'aron,' a northern form likely strengthened by Old Norse contact, ultimately tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to be' or 'to exist' (the same family that gives Latin its 'er-' forms). It muscled out older native plural forms like 'sind' and 'beoth' to become the standard plural 'be' we still speak today.
- plural power
- forces every plural subject into agreement
- old root
- descends from Old Norse 'eru' via Norse settlers
- metric ghost
- also a unit equaling 100 square meters
- identity glue
- links 'we' to whatever we claim to be
- existence engine
- present-tense backbone of the verb to be