Word.ws English Dictionary

old bean

old bean noun: an old friend; an old chap or fellow.

Noun

old bean (plural old beans)

  1. (UK, dated, slang, sometimes, term-of-address) An old friend; an old chap or fellow.
    • […] it is really an uncommon piece of exaggerative imagination which we find in the description of this old bean's elaborate costume, with its pads, straps, strings […]1876, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 37, page 238
    • When this here old Bean told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather.1905, H. G. Wells, Kipps, vi. §4

Forms of old bean

pluralold beans

Origin of old bean

Possibly from playful mid-word substitution of "boy" in "old boy"

Questions about old bean

What does old bean mean?
Old bean means an old friend; an old chap or fellow.
What part of speech is old bean?
Old bean is a noun.
What is the plural of old bean?
The plural of old bean is old beans.

Words near old bean in the dictionary

  1. Old Barag
  2. Old Basford
  3. Old Basing
  4. Old Basing and Lychpit
  5. Old Beach
  6. old bean
  7. old beans
  8. Old Belarusian
  9. Old Believer
  10. Old Believers
  11. Old Bering Sea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old bean (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-old bean.ogg.

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