Word.ws English Dictionary

Baily's beads

Baily's beads noun: a feature of total solar eclipses. As the moon "grazes" by the sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged lunar limb topography allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places and not in others.

Noun

Baily's beads pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A feature of total solar eclipses. As the moon "grazes" by the sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged lunar limb topography allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places and not in others.

Origin of Baily's beads

In honour of Francis Baily, who first fully explained the phenomenon in 1836.

Questions about Baily's beads

What does Baily's beads mean?
Baily's beads means a feature of total solar eclipses. As the moon "grazes" by the sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged lunar limb topography allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places and not in others.
What part of speech is Baily's beads?
Baily's beads is a noun.

Words near Baily's beads in the dictionary

  1. bails out on
  2. bails up
  3. bailsman
  4. bailsmen
  5. Baily
  6. Baily's beads
  7. Baima
  8. Baimaclia
  9. bain
  10. bain't
  11. bain-marie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Baily's beads (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Baily's beads.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/baily%27s_beads. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.