bead-hook, a kind of boat-hook. Chapman, tr. of Homer, Iliad xv. 356, 624; Caesar and Pompey, v. 1 (Septimius). Spelt beede-hook, Raleigh, Hist. World (NED.).
beak, beyk, to expose to the warmth of the fire; to season by heat. ‘Beak ourselves’, Grimald, Metrodorus, 3; in Tottel’s Misc., p. 109. Beyked, seasoned, Fitzherbert, Husbandry, § 24. 3. See EDD. (s.v. Beek vb. 1 and 2). See [beached].
beam, the main trunk of a stag’s horn which bears the antlers, Turbervile, Hunting, 53.
beam, see [beme].
beamy, beam-like, massive. Dryden, Palamon, iii. 480; tr. of Aeneid, xii. 641. Cp. 1 Sam. xvii. 7 (massive as a weaver’s beam—the spear of Goliath).
bear (the animal). Are you there with your bears? are you at it again? ‘Explained by Joe Miller as the exclamation of a man who, not liking a sermon he had heard on Elisha and the bears, went next Sunday to another church, only to find the same preacher and the same discourse’ (NED.). Some think it refers to the bears in a bear-garden; but they do not say why, nor how. Lyly, Mother Bombie, ii. 3 (Silena); Howell, Foreign Travell, p. 20.
bear-brich, bear-breech, bear’s-breech; a popular name of the acanthus; see NED. (s.v. Brank-ursine). Golding, Metam. xiii. 701 (L. acantho); fol. 162 (1603).
bear-herd, the keeper of a bear, 2 Hen. IV, i. 2. 191.
bear-ward, B. Jonson, Masque of Angus (Slug). Fletcher, Beggar’s Bush, iv. 4 (Prigg).
bear a brain, to use one’s brains, to be cautious; also, to remember. Romeo, i. 3. 29; Grim the Collier, v. 1. 1; in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, viii. 457. Cp. Skelton, Magnyfycence, 1422.