noun

• (education, rare) An academic grade better than a gamma and worse than an alpha.
  "But let me tell you happy extroverts that only Vera Telfer and H. A. C. Evans got even an alpha minus; only T. E. Hendrie got a beta plus […]"
• (finance) Average sensitivity of a security's price to overall securities market prices.
  "An inspection of the results indicate that Property Trusts is the lowest risk industry with a long-run beta of 0.4520 while Gold is the highest risk industry with a long-run beta of 1.5229."
• (computing, video games)
  "The company is offering a public beta program to test the software."
• (computing, video games)
  "He quickly deduced our goal—ship a quality beta—but he also quickly discerned that we had no idea about the quality of the product because of our pile of untriaged bugs."

adj

• (computing) Preliminary; prerelease. Refers to an incomplete version of a product released for initial testing.
• (of a person, object or action) Associated with the beta male/female archetype.

verb

• (computing) To preliminarily release computer software for initial testing prior to final release.
• (chiefly Internet) To beta-read a text.
  "1999, sqira a., in alt.tv.x-files.creative http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.x-files.creative/msg/29d32d27e61755f2?dmode=source My thanks to Heather; who read it and betaed it. Thank you."

noun

• (North India, Pakistan, colloquial, Hinglish) a term of endearment, used towards someone of equal or lower standing such as a friend or child, similar to brother or son
  "Don't pick that up, beta, it's dirty."