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Beaner
Beaner is an American ethnic slur for Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and sometimes other Latinos, derived from bean + -er; first printed 1965, descended from bean-eater and bean bandit, with unrelated Boston slang senses.
Bear (gay culture)
Bear is a gay male subculture of larger, hairy, bearded men; the word was coined in The Advocate in 1979, organized in 1980s San Francisco via BEAR Magazine and the Lone Star Saloon, and went global in the 1990s.
Beard (companion)
Beard is LGBT slang for an opposite-sex companion or spouse whose presence disguises someone's homosexuality, distinct from the bear subculture. The mid-1950s term covers escorts to cover marriages (lavender marriages), documented in Hollywood and still used where coming out is costly.
Becca Bloom
Becca Bloom, real name Rebecca Ma, is an American fintech professional and TikTok influencer (@beccaxbloom) who joined TikTok in January 2025 and became a leading #RichTok figure, daughter of Camelot Information Systems founders, TIME100 Creators 2025 honoree.
Bechdel test
Bechdel test (Bechdel-Wallace test): three-criterion measure of female representation in film from Alison Bechdel's 1985 comic strip, credited to Liz Wallace; two named women talk about something other than a man; inspired Vito Russo and Mako Mori tests.
Beck Anxiety Inventory
The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is a 21-item self-report questionnaire measuring anxiety symptom severity in adults, introduced by Aaron T. Beck and colleagues in 1988, scoring 0 to 63.
Beck Hopelessness Scale
The Beck Hopelessness Scale is a 20-item true/false self-report questionnaire measuring negative expectations about the future, introduced by Aaron T. Beck and colleagues in 1974.
Becky (slang)
Becky is slang for a white woman stereotyped as privileged, 'basic', or obliviously racist; popularized by Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1992 'Baby Got Back', amplified by Beyoncé's 2016 'Sorry' and 'BBQ Becky' memes.
Becoming Chinese
Becoming Chinese (also #BecomingChinese, Chinamaxxing) is a 2025-2026 TikTok trend of Western, mostly Gen Z users adopting Chinese lifestyle habits like warm water, indoor slippers, and baduanjin qigong, started by creator Sherry Zhu.
Becoming white thesis
Becoming white thesis: the whiteness-studies claim that Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants became white in America, advanced by Roediger, Ignatiev, and Brodkin and contested by Yang and Koshy's finding of no legal reclassification.
Bedding ceremony
The bedding ceremony, or bedding ritual, was a European wedding custom in which family and friends put newlyweds to bed together, symbolizing and serving as proof of the marriage's consummation.
Bedouin
Bedouin (Arabic badawī, plural badw), Arabic-speaking nomadic desert peoples of the Middle East and North Africa; tribal pastoralist societies of camel, sheep, and goat herders, now largely settled, notably the Negev Bedouin.
Begging
Begging is soliciting alms in public, historically regulated from medieval England's Statutes of Labourers through the 1824 Vagrancy Act to the ECHR's Lăcătuș v. Switzerland ruling and the UK's 2026 repeal.
Begum Rokeya
Begum Rokeya (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, 1880–1932), Bengali Muslim feminist writer of Pairaband, Rangpur; author of Sultana's Dream (1905), founder of a Calcutta girls' school and the Anjuman-i-Khawatin-i-Islam (1916). Not to be confused with the 1948–2026 Netrakona social worker of the same name.
Behavior mapping
Behavior mapping is an unobtrusive direct-observation method, used since the 1960s in environmental psychology and design, that records what people do, where, and when on a map of a setting.
Behavior modification
Behavior modification: application of conditioning principles to change measurable behavior, spanning experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis, and behavior therapy, with functional assessment and reinforcement-based methods.
Behavioral Analysis Unit
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), descended from the 1972 Behavioral Science Unit within NCAVC, applies behavioral science to investigations of terrorism, cybercrime, and violent crime, manages ViCAP, and runs threat assessment programs, though profiling validity remains debated.
Behavioral Science Unit
The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, founded in 1972 at Quantico, pioneered offender profiling and serial-killer interviews; it later became the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU).
Behaviorism
Behaviorism: school of psychology founded by John B. Watson in 1913, studying observable behavior via classical (Pavlov) and operant (Skinner) conditioning; includes radical vs methodological variants, Chomsky's 1959 critique, and applied behavior analysis.
Behavioural change theories
Behavioural change theories, also called behavior change theories or models, are formal frameworks explaining how people change actions, spanning continuum models like the theory of planned behavior, stage models like the transtheoretical model, and integrated systems like COM-B and the Behavior Change Wheel used in health interventions.
Behavioural sciences
Behavioural sciences: empirical disciplines studying human and animal behavior and its mental causes, spanning psychology, anthropology, economics, and cognitive science; distinguished by systematic observation, experiment, and the replication-crisis-era reform of methods.
Beijing bikini
Beijing bikini (北京比基尼), aka Beijing Belly or bang ye, is the Chinese summer practice of men rolling up their shirts to expose the midriff for cooling; coined by expats in 2015, banned with fines in cities like Tianjin, Jinan, and Shenyang in 2019.
Being Human Foundation
Being Human Foundation: name shared by several unrelated charities, chiefly Being Human – The Salman Khan Foundation (Mumbai, est. 2007, healthcare and education, funded by the Being Human clothing brand license), plus US, UK, and Nigerian entities.
Beja people
The Beja (Bidhaawyeet speakers) are a Muslim Cushitic-speaking nomadic pastoralist people of eastern Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea, resident for over 4,000 years, descended from the ancient Medjay and Blemmyes, and speaking the only North Cushitic language.
Belarusian diaspora
The Belarusian diaspora is the community of people of Belarusian origin or citizenship living outside Belarus, formed in waves since World War I, with large branches in the United States, Canada, and Russia.
Belarusian national revival
The Belarusian national revival (Беларускае нацыянальнае адраджэнне) is a cultural and political movement reviving Belarusian language and culture, with waves in the 1900s, the 1920s, and after 2020.
Belarusians
Belarusians are an East Slavic people of Belarus, also called Biełaruśians. Known for late-forming, ambivalent national identity, Baltic-Slavic ethnogenesis, Russian-language dominance, and a 300,000–500,000 strong post-2020 exile diaspora.
Belgians
Belgians are the inhabitants and nationals of Belgium, a Western European federal state created in 1830 whose population of 11.9 million is divided among three language communities.
Believe in Magic
Believe in Magic was a UK charity founded by Megan Bhari and Jean O'Brien in 2012. It was dissolved in 2020 following a Charity Commission inquiry into financial mismanagement.
Bell hooks
bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, 1952–2021) was an American feminist theorist and cultural critic, author of Ain't I a Woman and All About Love, known for interlocking critiques of racism, sexism, and class and for engaged pedagogy at Berea College.