a small, usually round object of glass, wood, stone, or the like with a hole through it, often strung with others of its kind in necklaces, rosaries, etc.
2.
beads,
a.
a necklace of beads: You don't have your beads on this evening.
b.
a rosary.
c.
Obsolete. devotions; prayers.
3.
any small globular or cylindrical body.
4.
a drop of liquid: beads of moisture.
5.
a bubble rising through effervescent liquid.
6.
Usually, beads.a mass of such bubbles on the surface of a liquid.
7.
the front sight of a rifle or gun.
8.
a reinforced area of a rubber tire terminating the sidewall and fitting within the rim of a wheel.
9.
Electricity. a glass, ceramic, or plastic insulator that contains and supports the inner conductor in a coaxial cable.
10.
Chemistry. a globule of borax or some other flux, supported on a platinum wire, in which a small amount of some substance is heated in a flame as a test for its constituents.
11.
Metallurgy. the rounded mass of refined metal obtained by cupellation.
12.
Architecture,Furniture. a small molding having a convex circular section and, usually, a continuous cylindrical surface; astragal.
13.
Welding. a continuous deposit of fused metal, either straight (stringer bead) or zigzag (weave bead).
–verb (used with object)
14.
to form or cause to form beads or a bead on.
15.
to ornament with beads.
16.
Carpentry. to form a bead on (a piece).
–verb (used without object)
17.
to form beads; form in beads or drops: perspiration beading on his forehead.
—Idioms
18.
count, say, or tell one's beads, to say one's prayers, using rosary beads: There were a few old women counting their beads in the hushed silence of the chapel.
19.
draw or get a bead on, to take careful aim at: The marksman drew a bead on his target.
Origin: bef. 900; ME bede prayer, prayer bead (where, on a rosary each bead symbolizes a prayer, the word for the notion symbolized was transferred to the designating object), OE gebed prayer; akin to bid1, G Gebet
[beed] 
