bead

/ˈbiːd/

bead noun: prayer, later especially with a rosary.

Image: pschemp, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bead (plural beads)

(archaic) Prayer, later especially with a rosary.
- That he must believe in the Pope;—go to Mass;—cross himself;—tell his beads;—be a good Catholick, and that this, in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven.1760, Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Penguin, published 2003, page 115
Each in a string of small balls making up the rosary or paternoster.
- Holonym: prayer beads
Synonyms:

prayer bead
A small, round object with a hole to allow it to be threaded on a cord or wire, particularly for decorative purposes.
Various small, round solid objects.
- Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems—surgical foam, a thermal gel depot, a microcapsule or biodegradable polymer beads.2013 May-June, Charles T. Ambrose, “Alzheimer’s Disease”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 200
A small drop of water or other liquid.
- beads of sweat
A bubble, in spirits.
A small, round ball at the end of a barrel of a gun used for aiming.
- She drew a bead on the target and fired.
- But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window[…], and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the...1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC
(broadly) Knowledge sufficient to direct one's activities to a purpose.
- We now have a bead on the main technical issues for the project
A rigid edge of a tire that mounts it on a wheel; tire bead.
A narrow molding with semicircular section.

Synonyms:

beading
(dated, physical) 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.
- the borax bead; the iron bead, etc.
A decorative, convex, rounded profile (often a half-circle) cut into an edge or surface of wood, typically defined by a narrow, deep channel called a quirk.

Verb

bead (third-person singular simple present beads, present participle beading, simple past and past participle beaded)

(intransitive) To form into a bead.
- The raindrops beaded on the car's waxed finish.
(transitive) To apply beads to.
- She spent the morning beading the gown.
(transitive) To form into a bead.
- He beaded some solder for the ends of the wire.
(transitive) To cause beads to form on (something).
- Only the hum of the miserable creatures stirred the heavy murk that beaded our foreheads with sweat as we pushed our way through it.1941, Emily Carr, “Greenville”, in Klee Wyck

Proper noun capitalized: BEAD

BEAD

(abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment.
- The language fails to specify whether states that accept the funding for AI infrastructure could risk losing their original BEAD allotments if found out of compliance, it fails to address the broad and vague definitions of covered technologies, and it fails to address the sole problem it sought to...2025 June 30, “Coalition Letter: Oppose the Updated AI Moratorium”, in Encode, page 1

bead meaning in Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati and Malay

bead in Gujarati

small, round, pierced object: મણકો maṇko
rosary ball: મણકો maṇko

bead in Malay

small, round, pierced object: manik

More languagesFewer languages

bead in Persian: منجوق monjuq, بلژی bolži, مهره mohre
bead in Thai: ลูกปัด lûuk-bpàt
bead in Vietnamese: chuỗi hạt, tràng hạt

Examples of bead in a sentence

You can string these beads on to this cord to make a colorful necklace.
The hunter unslung his rifle and took a bead on the hare.
I'll string together these beads to make a necklace for you.

All 40 example sentences with bead

Synonyms of bead

Forms of bead

Noun
plural	beads
Verb
third-person singular present	beads
present participle	beading
past participle	beaded
past	beaded

Past tense of bead: beaded

Plural of bead: beads

Origin of bead

From Middle English bede (“a prayer”), also “a bead for counting prayers” in a peire of bedes (literally “a pair of beads”), from Old English bedu, bed, ġebed (“a request, entreaty, prayer”), from Proto-West Germanic *bedu, *bed, *gabed, from Proto-Germanic *bedō, *bedą. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Gebäd (“prayer”), Cimbrian gapéet (“prayer”), Dutch gebed and bede (“prayer”), German Gebet (“prayer”), Low German Gebett (“prayer”), Luxembourgish Gebiet (“prayer”), Vilamovian gybāt (“prayer”).

Words formed from bead

Phrases with bead

14 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with bead

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bead

What does bead mean?: Bead means prayer, later especially with a rosary.
What is bead in Telugu?: Bead in Telugu is పూస (pūsa). See Bead meaning in Telugu.
What part of speech is bead?: Bead can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bead?: Bead is pronounced /ˈbiːd/.
What is the plural of bead?: The plural of bead is beads.

Words near bead in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bead (page history and authors); BEAD (page history and authors); bead (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-bead.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.