Word.ws English Dictionary

beag

beag noun: a ring.

Noun

beag (plural beags)

  1. (historical) A ring.
    • It was a mark of nobility among the German races — by some considered the origin of our coronets — and had even about it a quasi-religious character in memory of the "holy beag" (holy ring), the oath upon which was tantamount to the oath upon Thorr's hammer.1878, The Numismatic chronicle and journal of the Numismatic Society, Great Britain: Royal Numismatic Society
    • [...] and the description of that monarch in his anonymous Vita as coronatus lauro probably indicates a beag which was lighter than the formal diadema.1970, William A. Chaney, The cult of kingship in Anglo-Saxon England

Forms of beag

pluralbeags

Origin of beag

Learned borrowing from Old English bēag (“circular jewelry worn on the body: ring, armlet, crown, collar”), from Proto-West Germanic *baug, from Proto-Germanic *baugaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewgʰ- (“to bend”). Cognate with dialectal German Baug (“ring, collar”), Icelandic baugur (“ring, circle”). Doublet of bee (“ring”) and bagel.

Questions about beag

What does beag mean?
Beag means a ring.
What part of speech is beag?
Beag is a noun.
What is the plural of beag?
The plural of beag is beags.

Words near beag in the dictionary

  1. beadworks
  2. beady
  3. beady eye
  4. beady eyes
  5. beady-eyed
  6. beag
  7. beagador
  8. beagle
  9. Beagle Channel
  10. beagled
  11. beaglepuss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beag (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.

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