Word.ws English Dictionary

bedel

bedel noun: an administrative official at universities in several European countries, often with a policiary function at the time when universities had their own jurisdiction over students.

Noun

bedel (plural bedels)

  1. (historical) An administrative official at universities in several European countries, often with a policiary function at the time when universities had their own jurisdiction over students.
    • Oxford today has four bedels, representing Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Arts.
    • Next came the bedels and minor-bedels of all the Faculties, who by some accident were so jumbled together, that it was impossible to determine or arrange any order of precedence.[…] These bedels or greffiers were jolly robustious souls, bending beneath the weight of their ponderous silver maces...1837, William Harrison Ainsworth, “The Rector”, in Crichton, volume I, London: Richard Bentley, page 59
    Synonyms:
    poker

Proper noun capitalized: Bedel

Bedel (plural Bedels)

  1. A surname from French.

Synonyms of bedel

Forms of bedel

Noun
pluralbedels
Proper noun
pluralBedels

Origin of bedel

Borrowed from Medieval Latin pedellus, bedellus, bidellus, from Middle English bedel; cognate with beadle.

Borrowed from French Bedel.

Words formed from bedel

Questions about bedel

What does bedel mean?
Bedel means an administrative official at universities in several European countries, often with a policiary function at the time when universities had their own jurisdiction over students.
What part of speech is bedel?
Bedel can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of bedel?
The plural of bedel is bedels.

Words near bedel in the dictionary

  1. bedeguar
  2. bedeguars
  3. bedehouse
  4. bedehouses
  5. Bedekovčina
  6. bedel
  7. bedell
  8. bedelliid
  9. bedelliids
  10. bedells
  11. bedelries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bedel (page history and authors); Bedel (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: “bedel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bedel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.