bearded

Pluralbeardeds

1. 1
   adjective

   Having a beard, or involving a beard in some way.

   A bearded stranger in a flannel shirt asked us for directions to the ferry.

   Fans argued over whether the bearded version of the detective was better than the clean-shaven one.

   Similarwhiskered, bewhiskered

   Oppositebeardless, clean-shaven

   Note

   An adjective built straight on the noun rather than on a verb: beard plus the -ed of having, as in Middle English berded and perhaps Old English ġebearded before it. A beard can stand for manhood itself, so Shakespeare's "every bearded fellow" in Othello means any grown man, and a phrase can measure it, as in Conrad's "bearded to the waist like a gnome" in Lord Jim.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a beard, or a growth like a beard, of the kind named by the word it is joined to.

   A red-bearded fisherman hauled the dripping nets onto the dock.

   Moss-bearded oaks lined the narrow road into town.

   Note

   The combining form, joined by a hyphen to a word that says what kind of beard: a color (red-bearded), a length (long-bearded), or, when the growth is not hair at all, what it is made of, as in Matthew Arnold's "lichen-bearded pines" or the "weedy-bearded" river-god of C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian. An adverb can take the front slot too: Shakespeare's "scarce-bearded Caesar" is barely old enough to grow one.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having a beardlike fringe or appendage, often followed by with and the thing forming it.

   Old oaks bearded with Spanish moss shaded the road to the plantation.

   The farmer held up the bearded heads of barley, each one bristling with long spikes.

   Similarfringed

   Note

   A figure for anything hung with a fringe, and verse gives it its best lines: Longfellow's pines in Evangeline (1847) stand "bearded with moss," and A.E.'s mountains are "bearded with dewy grass." The with-phrase names what hangs like a beard; when it is left out, the noun has to suggest it, as in Oscar Wilde's "bearded star." Folded into one hyphenated word, the same picture becomes a compound like moss-bearded.

4. 4
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of beard.

   The young reporter bearded the senator outside the hearing room with three hard questions.

   On the hottest afternoons the bees bearded on the front of the hive.

   Note

   A regular verb, so one spelling serves as both the simple past (the reporter bearded the senator) and the participle after have or be (the oysters had been bearded). Its meanings scatter across trades: beekeepers say bees have bearded when they hang in a mass at the hive, and cooks beard an oyster by taking off its gills. Before a noun, though, the word is read as the adjective: a bearded man has a beard.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable

   In gardeners' informal shorthand, a bearded iris.

   The tall bearded by the mailbox finally opened, a deep velvety purple.

   At the spring garden show, the beardeds drew the biggest crowds.

   Note

   Gardeners clip the full name to its distinctive half and give it an ordinary plural: "Beardeds do best with a second feeding," Barbara W. Ellis advises in Taylor's Guide (2017), setting them beside Siberian and Japanese irises. The beard is the fuzzy strip of hairs that runs down each drooping outer petal, or fall.

6. 6
   adjective

   Of an ax: having the lower part of the head drawn down so the cutting edge reaches well below the butt, giving a wide blade at a low weight.

   The smith forged a bearded ax with a long edge and a slim, light head.

   Reenactors at the festival carried bearded axes copied from medieval designs.

   Note

   The name is a picture: seen from the side, the lower corner of the blade hangs down past the rest of the head the way a beard hangs below a chin. The butt is the blunt back of the head, opposite the edge, so the comparison measures how far the edge outreaches it. The design trades bulk for reach, giving a long bite without a heavy head.

7. 7
   adjective

   In heraldry, having barbs of a particular color.

   The blazon describes a black arrow bearded gold on a silver field.

   Her new banner showed three green arrows, each bearded in white.

   Note

   Heraldry uses this word when the barbs of a charge, such as an arrow, are painted a color of their own, much as armed covers claws and langued a tongue. In a blazon the tincture follows the word, often in heraldic terms, so an arrow sable, bearded or, is black with gold barbs.

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