beta
Pluralbetas
Pluralbetas
- 1The second letter of the Greek alphabet (Β, β), coming after alpha and before gamma; in modern Greek it stands for the v sound heard in have and vase.
In modern Greek a beta is said like an English v, not like a b.
In some fonts the lowercase beta, with its tall loop, is easy to mistake for a German ß.
Note
English took the name from Ancient Greek bêta, and it is a doublet of beth: the two words share one origin but reached the language by different roads. Because the letter stands second, straight after alpha, its name became English shorthand for second place, from the second-in-rank adjective to the testing stage that follows alpha.
- 2The stage of software development after alpha testing and before launch, when an unfinished version has been released to potential users for testing.
During beta, the developers collect crash reports from thousands of volunteer testers.
The email service spent years in beta, long after millions of people were already using it.
Note
It names a stage, so it usually comes after in: a product is in beta, goes into beta, and comes out of beta at launch. A public or open beta lets anyone sign up, while a closed beta admits invited testers only. Each copy handed out during the stage is itself a beta, a test version you can count.
- 3A preliminary version of software, released to users for testing while still unfinished, between alpha testing and the final launch.
Developers received the first beta of the operating system update three months before its public release.
Avoid installing betas on the laptop you rely on for work.
Note
Betas are counted like any other release: a game sees its first beta, and a phone maker rolls out the public beta of a new system. They sit on a ladder of unfinished builds, after alphas and before release candidates. None of the three is a production release, and guides that need stable software rule all three out.
- 4Describing a preliminary, incomplete version of a product that is released for initial testing ahead of the finished one.
Users of the beta release reported that the export button did nothing.
The phone maker pushed beta firmware to a few thousand volunteers before the official update.
- 5Short for beta male, a man regarded as less competent or desirable than an alpha male.
The forum's regulars dismissed anyone who disagreed with them as a beta.
Tired of swaggering men, she found herself drawn to a loyal, easygoing beta.
Note
Clipping beta male to one word left an ordinary noun that takes an article and a plural: a beta, those betas. In the online manosphere it is a put-down for a man ranked below the alphas. Romance fiction uses it more kindly; in Catherine Mann's Blaze of Glory (2006) one character prefers “the more laid-back betas” to the alpha males.
- 6A particle or ray of radiation, called in full a beta particle or a beta ray.
The detector registered a beta every few seconds while the sample sat beside it.
A few millimeters of aluminum will stop most betas from this source.
Note
Physicists use the bare word for a beta particle: a fast electron, or its positive twin the positron, thrown out of an atomic nucleus in beta decay. It travels farther through matter than an alpha particle and gets through paper, but a thin sheet of metal stops it; a gamma ray would go on through.
- 7The average sensitivity of a security's price to movements in the prices of the securities market as a whole.
With a beta of 1.3, the shares have tended to rise and fall about 30 percent more than the broader market.
Analysts estimated the fund's beta from five years of monthly returns.
Note
Investors read the number as a gauge of market risk. It is quoted as a figure, a beta of 0.45 or a long-run beta of 1.5, and the higher it runs, the more sharply a price tends to swing with the market, so steady holdings show low betas. It measures only the risk a security shares with the whole market, not troubles peculiar to one company.
- 8Associated with the beta male or beta female archetype, whether describing a person, an object or an action.
Commenters mocked the actor's tearful apology as beta behavior.
To the men on that forum, everything from splitting the check to driving a small car counted as beta.
Oppositealpha
- 9Ranking second in an order of precedence, immediately below the first.
When the pack leader was injured, the beta wolf took over and led the hunts.
In the chimpanzee troop, the beta chimp backed the leader in every dispute.
- 10To release computer software in an early, preliminary form for initial testing before its final release.
Small developers often beta their apps with a few hundred volunteers before submitting them to an app store.
The bank betaed its redesigned website with select customers and fixed dozens of bugs before the general launch.
Similartest
Note
As a verb it keeps the noun's spelling whole: the endings go straight onto the final a, giving betas, betaing and betaed. The product is the object, and the testers follow with: a studio betas a game with its most loyal players before the general launch.
- 11Information about a climbing route that can help a climber get up it.
Before trying the overhang, he asked the local climbers for beta on the crux.
The guidebook's beta for the third pitch turned out to be out of date.
Note
Climbers treat it mostly as a mass noun for shared know-how: you ask for beta, get the beta on a route, or give someone beta, down to which hand goes on which hold. Not everyone wants it. Some climbers refuse it before a first attempt, since knowing the moves in advance changes what kind of ascent they can claim.
- 12To read someone's draft and give feedback on it before it is published, as a beta reader does.
She agreed to beta the last three chapters before the fic went up on the archive.
Thanks to Sam for betaing this story on such short notice!
Note
The verb belongs to online fan fiction, where writers thank whoever betaed a story before it went up. Fans also spell the past form with an apostrophe, beta'd. It is a clipped beta-read, and the person who does the work is the writer's beta reader.
- 13SayBAY-tahUS/ˈbeɪtɑ/UK/ˈbeɪtɑː/An affectionate form of address for a friend, a child, or someone else of equal or lower standing, comparable to calling someone son or brother.
Relax, beta, I've already booked tickets for all of us.
Beta, call me as soon as you reach the station, okay?
Note
Hindi gave English this word, unrelated to the Greek letter: it comes from beṭā and lives in the colloquial English of North India and Pakistan, often within Hinglish. It works mainly as a form of address, set off by commas wherever it falls: “Don't pick that up, beta, it's dirty.” The tone is warm and familiar, right for home and friends rather than formal writing.
- 14Denoting a particular position in the molecular structure of an organic compound.
Elimination reactions often remove a hydrogen from the beta carbon.
Numbering the chain showed that the bromine sat at the beta position, not the alpha.
- 15Alternative spelling of betta.
A male beta will flare its fins at its own reflection in the glass.
She set up a heated tank for her new beta before bringing it home.
Note
The fish's name is usually spelled with two t's, matching its genus, Betta, whose best-known member is the Siamese fighting fish. The one-t spelling runs into the Greek letter and into software released for testing, so betta is the clearer choice whenever the aquarium is the subject.
- 16Content of any kind made early in a product's development but left out of the finished version.
Data miners keep turning up betas in the game files, from unused enemies to whole abandoned levels.
One beta still buried in the files is an entire desert level that never made it into the released game.
Note
Gamers mostly put it before another noun: beta levels, beta characters, beta items. Careful users object to it, because much of this material comes from early development, well before the public testing stage the word properly names. Writers who want to be exact call it cut or unused content.
- 17In omegaverse fiction, a person of a secondary sex much like ordinary humans, without the biological drives of alphas and omegas but usually able to bond and mate with either.
Readers spend half the fic convinced the detective is a beta, since he never reacts to the alphas around him.
In this omegaverse setting, betas keep the city running while alphas fight over territory.
Note
Omegaverse writers built their world on wolf-pack hierarchy, sorting characters into alphas, betas and omegas, which is why the genre also goes by A/B/O. Betas are its everyday middle, often cast as the reigning alpha's second in command. That ordinariness makes a good disguise: a character taken for a beta can turn out, at a first heat, to be an omega.
- 18A grade given for academic work, ranking above a gamma and below an alpha.
Her dissertation chapter came back marked with a beta plus and a page of comments.
The English class was for me delightful. My essays, still written under the influence of Kubla Khan, nearly always got a beta plus.
1979, Angus MacVicar, Silver in My Sporran: Confessions of a Writing ManNote
The scale takes its steps from the Greek alphabet, with alpha at the top, beta next and gamma below, and it is rarely used. Plus and minus sharpen each step, so an essay earns a beta plus or a beta minus. The verbs are the ordinary ones for marks: a student gets a beta, and a tutor gives one.
- 19The sideslip angle of an aircraft: the sideways angle between the direction it moves through the air and the direction its nose points.
The flight-control computer limits beta so the jet cannot slip too far sideways.
Engineers plotted side force and yawing moment against beta from the wind-tunnel data.
Note
Engineers write the angle as the Greek letter β, and in talk the letter's name stands for the angle itself. Its partner is the angle of attack, written α, which measures the same mismatch between airflow and aircraft in the up-and-down direction; beta measures it sideways. In smooth, coordinated flight pilots work to keep it small.
- 20A range of power settings in which the throttle lever directly sets the blade angle of a constant-speed propeller, so the blades can be flattened to create heavy drag and slow the aircraft quickly.
As the wheels touched down, she pulled the power levers into beta and the airplane slowed sharply.
The checklist warns pilots never to select beta while the aircraft is still in the air.
Note
Pilots speak of it as a position the lever moves into: they pull the power levers into beta, taxi in beta, and bring them out again. Outside this range a governor adjusts the blade pitch on its own to hold a steady propeller speed. In beta that automatic control steps aside, which is what lets pilots slow sharply after touchdown and manage speed on the ground.
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Practice
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Origins
From Ancient Greek βῆτα (bêta). It is a doublet of beth.
From Hindi बेटा (beṭā).