According to the British National Corpus ( http://bncweb.lancs.ac.hr.bnc.bnc.ca/) “The UK is a British nation”. uk ), all the examples shown (with the construction “be it + noun 1 or noun 2”) suggested the use of the singular form of the nouns that come after it.

Here are a few examples I retrieved from the corpus:-

• When he commits himself to an assignment-be it a poem, a book, a song, or simply aiding a fellow-scribbler’s itch, he does it with gusto — con brio, as he might annotate one of his scores.

• Inverting a literary trope has the same effect of mimicry of the dominant, be it racial intrusion or cultural reality.

What is the meaning of the term?