One distinguishable meaning of the term word can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. ARE meaning: 1. we/you/they form of be: 2. we/you/they form of be: 3. present simple of be, used with…. Learn more. Is it raining, or snowing, or what? Is this exciting, or what? A clever play, what? What you need is a vacation. What angered us was the tone of the article. What does he care? … what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk. William Shakespeare. What minerals do we export? What mountains! In English, there are 16 punctuation marks — the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, em dash, en dash, hyphen, parentheses, brackets, braces, apostrophe, double quotation marks, single quotation marks, and ellipsis — and they’re not as scary as they sound. ARE definition: 1. we/you/they form of be: 2. we/you/they form of be: 3. present simple of be, used with…. Learn more. How do I know whether the subject of the verb is the list, or the word what ; and if it's the word what , how can I figure out if it is singular or plural? As a statement the sentence would be The primary cause and the primary consequence of the. are. , and not The primary cause and the primary consequence of the. is. The meaning of ARE is present tense second-person singular and present tense plural of be. Are you your body? And if so, how exactly does this work? Lets explore lots of confusing questions. This video is part of a collaboration with CGPGrey. All of these symbols come in two major categories: punctuation marks and typographical symbols. These symbols have many different uses and include everything from the humble period (.) to the rarely used caret symbol (^). 'What is' is used with singular nouns or non-countable nouns, while 'what are' is used with plural nouns. The choice between them depends on the subject of the sentence. This phrase is correct and commonly used in English. Use 'what is' when the subject of the sentence is singular or a non-countable noun. What is your name?.