stressed BIN

noun

variants or stressed been

linguistics

: the verb form been used with spoken emphasis in African American English to indicate that something (such as an event or state) happened or existed in the remote past or that it began in the remote past and is still ongoing

… Use of stressed BIN … in "She BIN married" for SE (see SE sense 4) "She has been married for a long time (and still is)," or "He BIN ate it" for SE "He ate it a long time ago" (Rickford 1975, Baugh 1983: 80-2).

—John R. Rickford

It was in this segregated context that Arthur Spears (2015) identified the social locus for African American Standard English (AASE), which he defined as a variety of AAE that is devoid of vernacular features, but contains "Distinctively Black Grammatical Features" (DBGFs), such as remote stressed BIN …

—Tracey L. Weldon

In AAE, the BEEN (stressed been) means specifically that the event or condition not only still exists but also began in the distant past, never five minutes ago, or yesterday, for example.

—Irene L. Clark

… These include, but are not limited to, grammatical constructions involving habitual … be …, done, be done, and stressed been (referred to by some as BIN). Many of these structures are considered camouflaged forms because their surface forms (e.g., be, done) appear in standard English and other White English varieties, but in African American English varieties they express a wider range of meanings within the grammar.

—Janna B. Oetting and Janet L. McDonald

Note: The feature of African American English called stressed BIN frequently precedes perfect (see perfect entry 1 sense 5) verb forms as well as progressive (see progressive entry 1 sense 7) verb forms ending in -ing. It can also precede the African American English feature perfective done, additional predicates (such as nouns, adjectives, and prepositional phrases), and, in certain contexts, adverbial phrases.

called also BEEN, BIN

Word History

First Known Use

1982, in the meaning defined above