beard
Pluralbeards
Pluralbeards
Formsbeards, bearding, bearded
- 1A growth of hair on the chin, jaw and lower cheeks.
He grew a beard over the winter and shaved it off in the spring.
The old portraits show stern men with full beards and heavy coats.
UsagePeople grow, have and shave off a beard; a full beard covers the chin, cheeks and jaw.
Similarwhiskers
Note
The plain meaning the others are pictured from. A bird's tuft of feathers, a mussel's anchoring threads and the barb behind an arrow's point are all beards because they look like one.
- 2A person who acts as someone's partner or companion to hide that person's real relationship, such as their homosexuality or an affair.
For years the actress served as a beard for her closest friend, a closeted leading man.
His agent told him to get a beard before the premiere.
UsageUsually someone's: his beard, her beard. Get a beard means find such a partner.
Note
A word for an arrangement, not a character: the beard is usually someone's, as when Charlotte concludes in Sex and the City (2004), "So this makes you his beard." Advice to stay closeted takes the form get a beard, which Cara Delevingne said in a 2019 interview Harvey Weinstein had once told her. In 1991 Gay Community News still paired it with a plainer word: "shield (or 'beard')."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Charlotte says “So this makes you his beard” in Sex and the City in 2004; Wiktionary identifies the episode as “The Cold War,” broadcast February 1, 2004. en.wiktionary.org
- In a 2019 interview, Cara Delevingne reported that Harvey Weinstein had told her to “get a beard”; the original interview is dated September 13, 2019. net-a-porter.com
- A 1991 Gay Community News article paired shield with beard; Wiktionary identifies Rudy Grillo’s “Who's The Top?”, December 1, 1991, page 8. en.wiktionary.org
- 3Of a gay man or lesbian: to accompany a gay person of the opposite sex so that they pass as heterosexual.
In the studio era, actors would quietly beard one another to keep the gossip columns happy.
He had been bearding for a closeted colleague so long that even his parents believed the romance.
UsageOften beard for someone, or beard one another.
Note
The verb takes either shape: two friends beard one another, or one beards for the other, as in Hildred Billings's "a lesbian who is bearding for her gay best friend" (2017). Unlike the noun for the companion, the verb is used of gay people covering for each other, so the arrangement can run both ways.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- The quoted wording is attributed to Hildred Billings in Blown By An Inconvenient Wind. en.wiktionary.org
- 4A tuft or cluster of feathers on a bird's head, throat, or chest, such as on a grouse or turkey.
The grouse raised the dark beard beneath its bill as it began to display.
The hens' beards stood out against the pale feathers of their throats.
- 5Long or stiff hairs on a plant, such as the bristly awns on an ear of grain.
The beard on an ear of rye is longer and stiffer than on most wheat.
The beards of wild oats twist as they dry, working the seed down into the soil.
Similarawn
Note
Awn is the botanist's term; beard is the plainer name for the whole bristling brush an ear of barley or rye carries. A flower's tuft takes the name too, as on the bearded iris, where it runs along the drooping sepals called falls. Like the feathers at a bird's beak, it is the chin's hair transferred to anything that bristles the same way.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Awn is a botanical term for a grain's bristle or beard. mobot.org
- Barley and rye carry bristly awns. en.wikipedia.org
- The beard runs along the falls, which are sepals. mgnv.org
Less common meanings
- 6To confront or oppose someone boldly and bravely, often to that person's annoyance.
She marched into the chairman's office to beard him over the layoffs.
The old senator, bearded in his own committee room by a first-term member, turned purple with rage.
UsageBest known in beard the lion in his den, facing someone on their own ground; often passive: bearded in his own office.
Similarconfront, challenge, defy, face
Note
This verb loves the passive and a home ground: "Am I to be bearded in my own palace by an insolent Monk?" asks a character in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), and Conan Doyle's Murphy "was not to be bearded thus in his own seat of office." Facing someone on their own ground is the affront, the same contempt as pulling a man's beard.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- The Castle of Otranto was written by Horace Walpole. en.wikipedia.org
- The Castle of Otranto was first published in 1764. jacklynch.net
- Manfred says 'palace', not 'castle'; the Gutenberg text capitalizes 'Monk'. gutenberg.org
- Conan Doyle's narration describes Murphy as unwilling to be bearded in his own seat of office. gutenberg.net.au
- 7The byssus of certain shellfish: the tuft of tough threads by which a mussel or similar mollusk anchors itself.
Scrub the shells and tug the beard away with a sharp pull toward the hinge.
The beards of farmed mussels are usually removed before the shellfish reach the store.
UsageIn cooking you pull off or remove the beard; recipes also say debeard the mussels.
- 8A stand-in who poses as a customer or companion, or acts as a go-between, on someone else's behalf.
Rather than bid himself, the collector used a beard to buy the house at auction.
Casinos watch for beards placing bets on behalf of banned players.
Similarfront, proxy, stand-in, go-between
Note
Slang that began at the gambling tables, where a beard bets on behalf of someone who would rather not be seen betting. It now covers any front sent to deal for a person who wants to stay out of sight. Joshua Chaffin, writing in 2024, shows the modern use: a developer, rather than approach the owner directly, sends a friend as his "beard."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- This slang sense originated in gambling. en.wiktionary.org
- A gambling beard places bets while concealing the actual bettor's identity. teamvalor.com
- Joshua Chaffin wrote the cited example in 2024. en.wiktionary.org
- Chaffin describes a developer sending a friend as a “beard” instead of approaching the owner directly. marcroberts.com
- 9To grow hair on the chin and jaw; to develop a beard.
- 10In metal type, the part of a letter's body between the shoulder of the shank and the printing face.
Note
Printers of metal type named the parts of a letter like a body, with a shank, a shoulder and a face, and the beard sits between the shoulder and the face, just as a real beard sits below one.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Metal-type anatomy uses body-part names, including shank, shoulder and face. c82.net
- The beard lies between the shoulder and the printing face. gutenberg.org
- 11Growths that project from the jaw in some whales, and from the mouth or jaws in some fish.
- 12Of bees, to cluster together in a mass that hangs down like a beard.
- 13The gills of certain two-shelled mollusks, such as the oyster.
- 14To remove the gills from an oyster or a similar shellfish.
- 15The hairs growing on the labial palps of a moth or butterfly.
- 16To seize a man by the beard, or to pluck or pull it, in anger or contempt.
- 17A barb or backward-pointing spike on an arrowhead or similar tool that keeps the head from being pulled out easily.
- 18On an ax head, the curved lower edge that runs from the bottom of the blade back to the handle.
- 19The part of the underside of a horse's lower jaw, just above the chin, on which the curb of a bridle rests.
Showing meanings only.
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Origin
From Middle English berd, from Old English beard, from Proto-West Germanic *bard and Proto-Germanic *bardaz (compare West Frisian burd, Dutch baard, German Bart). It is also related to Latin barba, Lithuanian barzda and Russian борода́ (borodá), and may go back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰardʰeh₂; it is a doublet of barb.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- English beard descends from Middle English berd and Old English beard. en.wiktionary.org
- The earlier reconstructed forms are Proto-West Germanic *bard and Proto-Germanic *bardaz. en.wiktionary.org
- West Frisian burd, Dutch baard and German Bart are related Germanic forms. en.wiktionary.org
- Beard is related to Latin barba, Lithuanian barzda and Russian борода́ (borodá). en.wiktionary.org
- Proto-Indo-European *bʰardʰeh₂ is a proposed ancestor. en.wiktionary.org
- Beard and barb are etymological doublets. en.wiktionary.org