Aristotle tells us more than once that ‘to be’ is said in many ways, whatever that means. I had better say straight off that I can find very little in the present paper that tells us what that means. But in the course of considering what it might mean, Owen, a long time ago (1960), told us that, while some people held that ‘being’ has “a single meaning” in all its applications, Aristotle was one of those who denied this. In his view, to be was to be something or other . . . .1