betas

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of beta.

   Stocks with high betas tend to rise and fall more sharply than the market as a whole.

   The studio released two public betas before the game's official launch.

   Note

   The plural belongs to the countable meanings: Greek letters, preliminary software releases, and a stock's sensitivity to the market. The testing phase itself is uncountable, so a game stays in beta while its studio ships several betas. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, as in a developer who betas each update, and only the sentence tells them apart.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of beta.

   The developer betas every major update with a small group of volunteers before the public release.

   He betas fan fiction for three writers he met on a forum.

   Note

   Two verbs share this present-tense form. A developer betas an update by releasing it early for testing, while in Internet usage a reader betas a friend's chapters, short for beta-reading them. Both take a direct object and follow he, she, it or a singular noun. The spelling also belongs to the plural noun.

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