Beads

How to spell beads

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce beads

What does beads mean?

1. nounSmall decorative balls with a hole through the middle, threaded onto string or wire to make jewellery or ornaments.
2. nounSmall round drops of a liquid that form on a surface.

Beads in a sentence

• She threaded the glass beads onto a length of nylon thread.

• Beads of sweat formed on his forehead during the workout.

• The necklace broke and tiny wooden beads scattered across the floor.

• Tiny beads of water clung to the cold window after the shower.

Where does beads come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word has a surprising religious past. It comes from the Old English 'gebed', which meant 'prayer' rather than anything you could string on a thread. In medieval devotion, worshippers counted their prayers on a string of small pierced balls, and the phrase 'to tell one's beads' meant to recite those prayers in sequence. Over time the meaning slid from the prayer itself to the little objects used to keep count, so by the 1300s 'bead' had come to name the small spherical balls we picture today. The root is the same one that gives us 'bid' in the sense of 'bidding prayers', and the spelling keeps the long 'ea' vowel that English readers will recognise from words like 'lead' and 'read'.

How the word is built

• bead (from Old English gebed: prayer)
• -s (plural)