Bead

How to spell bead

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bead

What does bead mean?

1. nounA small, usually rounded object with a hole through it, threaded onto string or wire to make jewellery.
2. nounA small drop of liquid that forms a rounded shape on a surface.
3. verbTo collect or form into small drops, or to decorate something with beads.

Bead in a sentence

• noun

  She threaded each bead carefully onto the nylon string.

• noun

  A bead of sweat ran down the runner's forehead.

• verb

  Water will bead neatly on the polished surface.

• noun

  A single wooden bead had rolled under the workbench.

• noun

  Every bead of rain clung to the freshly waxed bonnet.

• verb

  She chose to bead the hem of the gown by hand.

Where does bead come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English 'gebed', which meant 'prayer', and it is closely related to the verb 'biddan', the ancestor of modern 'bid' in the old sense of 'to pray'. For centuries a 'bead' was literally a prayer, and the phrase 'to count one's beads' meant to recite a series of prayers. Worshippers tracked those prayers by sliding the small perforated balls of a rosary along a string, and so by the late Middle Ages the name of the prayer quietly moved across to the little ball that marked it. From that everyday counting object the meaning widened to any small rounded ball used in jewellery, and later still to any tiny droplet, as in a bead of sweat. The journey from 'prayer' to 'shiny ball' is a neat reminder that the spelling preserves a plain Germanic root, not a Latin one.

How the word is built

• bead (single morpheme; from Old English gebed: prayer, later transferred to a prayer-counting ball)