She was disloyal, Casper was disloyal, so them muthafuckas gotta go. Like you said[,] webeen knew we was going to have to kill Frost, so let's do it and Light too.” Star said. “Say no more. I'ma handle Kisha myself.” Max said walking to the door.
Alexander Pollatsek, Rebecca Treiman (2015)The Oxford Handbook of Reading, Oxford Library of Psychology,→ISBN, page433: “For example, the remote past “been” is used as part of the verb to express something that took place in the distant past: 'hebeen reading story books.'”
Mary Kohn, Walt Wolfram, Charlie Farrington, Jennifer Renn, Janneke Van Hofwegen (2020)African American Language: Language development from Infancy to Adulthood, Cambridge University Press,→ISBN, page231: “Remote past 'been' ([RPB], coded on word) =been is used to mark action in the remote past; in such cases the wordbeen is always stressed (e.g., he been[RPB] had that job; I been[RPB] bought her clothes).”
Either fromMiddle Englishbeen(“to be”,infinitive) (fromOld Englishbēon), or from a dialectal use of the preceding past tense form as an infinitive form (compare dialectal use of(I)'s,(I) is in the first person,(he) am in the third person, etc).
1584,George Peele,The Arraignment of Paris, I, ii:
My love is fair, my love is gay, / As fresh asbeen the flowers in May;
1606,N[athaniel] B[axter],Sir Philip Sydneys Ouránia, That Is, Endimions Song and Tragedie, Containing All Philosophie, London:[…] Ed. Allde, for Edward White,[…],→OCLC,signature G, recto:
Theſe Beaſtesbeen of higheſt Regard and Price / To pleaſure Princes and to murder vice.
O Friar, those are faults that are not seen, / Ours open, and of worse examplebeen.
1686, Edward Fairfax, transl.,Godfrey of Bulloigne: Or, The Recovery of Jerusalem[3], section 20, page 8:
Some of green Boughs their slender Cabbins frame, / Some lodged wereTortoſa's streets about, / Of all the Hoſt the Chief of Worth and Name / Aſſembledbeen, a Senate grave and ſtout;
The contemporary pluralbenen is derived from an analogy to other nouns with regular plurals. Originally,been was left unchanged in the plural; such use is preserved only inset phrases likeop de been(“upright, standing, awake”).
[…]Filip of Repintoun whilis hewas a chanoun of Leycetre, Nycol Herforde, dane Geffrey of Pikeringe, monke of Biland and a maistir dyuynyte, and Ioon Purueye, and manye other whicheweren holden rightwise men and prudent[…]
From (with the-þ replaced with an-n leveled in from the past and subjunctive)Old Englishbēoþ, present plural ofbēon(“to be”), fromProto-Germanic*biunþi, third-person present plural of*beuną(“to be, become”).
The usual plural form ofbeen isaren in the North,been in the Midlands, andbeth in the South;sind also existed, especially early on, but was not the predominant form in any area.
Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor,A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published1867,page25
