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bead |
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.05 sec. |
beadSmall object, usually pierced for stringing. It may be made of virtually any material—wood, shell, bone, seed, nut, metal, stone, glass, or plastic—and is worn or affixed to another object for decorative or, in some cultures, magical purposes. The earliest Egyptian beads (c. 4000 BC) were made of stone, feldspar, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, hematite, or amethyst and were variously shaped (sphere, cone, shell, animal head). By 3000–2000 BC, gold beads in tubular shapes were in use. From the Middle Ages to the 18th century, trade in beads was enormous. Today the richness of beadwork varies with fashion. bead(1) A small programming subroutine. A sequence of beads that are strung together is called a "thread." bead 1. Architect Furniture a small convex moulding having a semicircular cross section 2. Chem a small solid globule made by fusing a powdered sample with borax or a similar flux on a platinum wire. The colour of the globule serves as a test for the presence of certain metals (bead test) 3. Metallurgy a deposit of welding metal on the surface of a metal workpiece, often used to examine the structure of the weld zone 4. RC Church one of the beads of a rosary How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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Whenever the wheels sank farther than usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone, she bounded involuntarily into the air, came down again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and picked up or settled more firmly a small pink sun shade, which seemed to be her chief responsibility, --unless we except a bead purse, into which she looked whenever the condition of the roads would permit, finding great apparent satisfaction in that its precious contents neither disappeared nor grew less. He had bead eyes, and his helmet was sewed on with stitches. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Kiondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions. |
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