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say ones beads

 - 1 dictionary result

bead

[beed]
–noun
1. 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.
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 bid 1 , G Gebet


beadlike, adjective


4. droplet, globule, blob, dot.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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