bead

Meanings

Noun

• Prayer, later especially with a rosary.
• Each in a string of small balls making up the rosary or paternoster.
• A small, round object.
• A ridge, band, or molding.
• Knowledge sufficient to direct one's activities to a purpose.
• A glassy drop of molten flux, as borax or microcosmic salt, used as a solvent and color test for several mineral earths and oxides, as of iron, manganese, etc., before the blowpipe.
• Front sight of a gun.

Verb

• To form into a bead.
• To apply beads to.
• To form into a bead.
• To cause beads to form on (something).

Related

Narrower meaning words

• hair pipe

Origin

• From Middle English bede ("a prayer"), also “a bead for counting prayers” in a peire of bedes, from Old English bedu, bed, ġebed, from Proto-West Germanic *bedu, *bed, *gabed, from Proto-Germanic *bedō, *bedą.
• Cognate with Dutch gebed and bede, German Gebet.